The Mayor of Almuñécar has published a public band (bylaw for specific period) setting down how the beaches can be used during this San Juan; i.e., do's and don't's.

All removable objects (tents etc) cannot be installed on the beach before 10.00h on the 23rd and must be taken down and removed at the latest by 22.00h on the 24th.

In other words you can’t spend the night of the 22nd on any beach, much less erect a tent.

Neither can you race down there at 08.00h on the 23rd and set one up. That doesn’t mean that you can’t bring your stuff down to the beach as soon as it is light, just as long as you do not unpack and set it out/up.

Similarly, on the 24th you have to have all your clobber off the beach – not forgetting your rubbish – by 22.00h. There is no law, however, that says that you cannot stroll along the beach or even sit on it after that time, up to midnight, as long as you don’t have beach equipment with you. Anglers are permitted to use the beach well into the early morning, however, with all their equipment.

On the night of the 23rd you can’t set up improvised discos nor any kind of business. You can’t take a generator to provide lighting or run electrical appliances in your tent, either. Finally, you can’t steal your grandmother’s dining-room table and chairs and hoof them down onto the beach, because only “appropriate beach equipment” is permitted.

Now, you might think, “who is going to bring furniture from a house down” but believe it has been done – I have a photo, somewhere, of an abandoned dining-room table on a beach. In the days before they started clamping down on excesses, San Juan would spawn tent cities equipped with bars, all kind of hawkers and bloody great discotheque-sized speakers blaring out.

One last thing… one of the reasons that the walkways down to the shore are now made out of concrete was because people used to rip up the wooden ones and use them for fuel on their bonfires.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia – Photo: JM de Haro)