There are certain things that you are not allowed to do on beaches on the Costa Tropical; not all of them – it depends on the town and the beach.

For example you’re not allowed to empty your bladder, sneakily, whilst you’re bathing, though how the authorities intend to catch you at it is a mystery. If its a pool, there are dyes, but in the sea…

Motril has a set of standing rules, which Torrenueva and Salobreña copy, so to speak, but Almuñécar doesn’t. What Almuñécar does each year is issue a ban on staking out a spot on the beach at dawn with your brolly and then going home until a more sensible hour.

But the beach-use rules are not there to be enforced – there are no ‘patrols’ to catch you out burying your mother-in-law, for example. No, the idea is to inform via notices etc and cross their fingers.

In fact, you’ve got to be a pretty bad-ass, nuisance for the police to come along and fine you.

Another rule is the one covering bat games & frisbees – you can’t do it within six metres of anybody else… Seeing as the average Spanish beach in summer looks like a penguin colony with standing room only, we can’t see that one being ‘obeyed’ by many.

Another rule that exists but in fantasy, is that you can’t litter the beach around you, with paper, plastic, fruit peels and drink cans. Further, you can’t have music blaring away – yeah, right!

Everybody knows that you can’t camp on Spanish beaches, with one exception: San Juan. You can’t fish (angling or scuba diving) between 09.00h and 22.00h. You can’t have pets there either; not even a camel or shark.

You can’t have a BBQ, use shower gels when showering the seawater and sand off you and neither can you wash your picnic plates with detergent using a beach shower either. The BBQ ban includes gas fires.

(News: Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)