The Almuñécar Town Hall has approached the Central Government in Madrid for it to fund coastal defences in the shape of groynes and breakwaters.

What Almuñécar is asking for, more specifically, is work on the breakwaters on Playa Puerta del Mar in front of Las Góndolas and repair work on the Velilla one.

And the Central Government appears to want to play ball, not wishing to get its fingers burnt, as it did last summer with heavy machinery on the beaches at the beginning of July.

Contained within the route plan, Estratégia Costa 2017, are all the points that were damaged by the recent gales. The details of the route plan will be announced shortly.

Yet, the Almuñécar Town Hall doesn’t plan to sit around and wait for the Central Government to decide what the damage is and has instead evaluated what it will cost to put things right.

As far as Almuñécar is concerned, it will require 1.2m euros to complete beach defences so that money won’t be wasted each year repairing wave-action damage because adequate coastal works will prevent such damage in the future.

For instance, in the case of Velilla, half a million euros will be need to replace lost beach sand and extend the existing breakwater so that it doesn’t happen again.

As for the breakwater in front of Las Góndolas, which is practically submerged, due to deterioration, it will need to be reinforced.

Lastly, the Almuñécar project, fruit of a town-hall survey, would require to small breakwaters on the Cotobro beach – at present the beach has all but disappeared.

The accompanying photo shows the damage suffered behind the water park in Velilla.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucía)