Winter storms erode more and more of the beaches on the Spanish coast each year. Some are restored at great expense for tourists. Reestablish dunes, deconstruct sites… Several solutions exist, but a balance remains to be found with tourist activity.
The phenomenon is terrible. Every winter, storms erode entire sections of the Spanish coast, stretches of beach restored before the arrival of summer visitors with tons of sand and cement. But some coastal towns want to put an end to this vicious circle and are looking for alternative solutions.
North of Barcelona, the situation is particularly critical on the railway line linking the Catalan capital to Mataró, which runs along the sea and where the space between trains and waves shrinks every winter. In Montgat, the beach has practically disappeared and storms expose rocks formerly buried under large, long sandbanks.
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On the small stretch of beach that remains, Bruno Cambre, 37, fishes almost every day with two friends. “The sea swallowed up all the sand and eroded the stones. She did a lot of damage, not just here, all over the coast.”he explains. “Four or five years ago, we went to these beaches and the sand extended very far, up to 500 or 700 meters. Now there are no more than 20 left.”. He also fears for the small fishermen’s houses behind him “which will disappear over time”.
“Very expensive and very ineffective”
To the south of the Catalan capital too, wedged between an ever more raging sea and a seafront saturated with vast promenades and buildings, the beaches shrink at a worrying rate in winter, as in Calafell for example. “We’re going to start losing beaches in the next ten years.”warned Greenpeace Spain in 2024 in its report “The Spanish coast in danger”.
Continuing to dump tons of sand on the beach that winter will carry away and replacing the slabs of the seaside promenade to prepare for the arrival of summer visitors is “very expensive and very ineffective”confides to AFP Carla García Lozano, professor of physical geography at the University of Girona.
For six years, she has overseen the regeneration of the beaches of Calafell, a town of 30,000 inhabitants which lives mainly from tourism. “During periods of winter storms, beaches erode, and during periods of good weather, when there are fewer storms, often in spring and summer, especially in summer, they regenerate naturally.†but this “Regeneration only takes place in spaces that are very naturalâ€explained Carla García Lozano.
Déconstruction
Calafell therefore began to experiment with alternative solutions so that the beaches become these natural spaces again: deconstruct 800 square meters of maritime promenade, remove two piers, install reed barriers along the beach to retain the sand and create dunes, move the sand from the areas where it is surplus to those where it is lacking and use drones to observe the evolution of sandbanks.
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“In an area of 4,500 mètres carrés, on a combined 1,000 mètres cubes of sand”a “a significant amount”underlines Carla García Lozano. “On average, this represents 25 centimeters in height but, in certain areas, it reaches one and a half meters”.
Equilibre à trouver
Other neighboring coastal communities are doing similar things and removing parking lots at the foot of the beach, piers or refreshment bars. The demolition of part of the seaside promenade has had good results, Calafell’s deputy for Environment, Aron Marcos Fernandez, admitted to AFP, assuring that the municipality is even considering destroying another part.
But, in general, the municipal councilor pleads for finding a balance between renaturalization and tourist uses of the beach: “We need to understand what social role the beach plays in the communityâ€.
Restore the dunes
In Sitges, a famous seaside resort also located south of Barcelona, the local authorities have chosen to restore the dunes but there is no question of removing part of the promenade.
“We have a century-old promenade and it is a promenade where the population has a lot of activities”tell me more, Aurora Carbonell: “It’s part of the history of Sitges”.
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For Spain, the solutions to be sought are not only environmental: each year it welcomes nearly 100 million tourists seeking sun and sand, which constitutes a windfall equal to 12.6% of GDP – more than 200 billion euros per year -, with 2.7 million jobs at stake.
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