The Playa de Maro is the subject of controversy after it was awarded, if that is the right word, Una Bandera Negra, which is definitely a black mark on its reputation.
Whilst official administrations hand out Banderas Azules for beaches that are deemed to have excellent quality, Ecologistas en Acción hand out Banderas Negras, to highlight the beaches that they consider fail miserably.
According to its Banderas Negras 2026 report Playa de Maro has dubious water quality after they detected sewage in their test samples. The Town hall, on the other hand, reject out of hand this assessment and say that the only flag that should fly on that beach is a Bandera Azul.
The question is, who do you believe?
Each year, Ecologistas en Acción, hand out up to two Black Flags for each province; one for traces of pollution and the other for poor environmental handling. After examing the 8,000 kilometres of Spain’s coastlines, they handed out 48 Black Flags, 14 related to pollution, as sewage-disposal deficiences are serious sewage-treatment problems.
In the case of the province of Málaga, Playa de Maro received one for alleged sewage contamination and the other went to the old Residencia de Tiempo Libre in Marbella, for poor environmental handling, owing to urban-encroachment.
Nerja Councillor for Beaches, María del Carmen López (PP), defended the beach precisely for the quality of the water, which has been qualified as having excellent health by Consejería de Salud de la Junta de Andalucía (PP), which carries out periodic controls and sample analysis on all beaches along the coast of Andalucía.
She denies the presence of untreated or insufficiently treated sewage linked to the chiringuito on Playa de Maro. She accuses the ecologist organisation of “seeking notoriety and causing unjustified harm.”
But this controversy regarding the said beach is nothing new as in May this year, GENA-Ecologistas en Acción, registered a complaint before the Town Hall and Costas in Granada about the existence of a continuous spill of untreated sewage in the area of Playa de Maro, from the Barranco del Arco. We covered this in an article at the time. The ecologists blamed the camping facilities, Nerja Villa de Mar and the chiringuito on the said beach as possible sources of the contamination.
(News: Maro, Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia – Source: E. Cabezas/Sur)
Keywords: Untreated Sewage Presence, Playa de Maro, Ecologistas en Accion, Town Hall, Junta, Water-Quality Analysis, Samples, Bandera Azul, Bandera Negra
news, andalucia, malaga, costa del sol, axarquia, nerja, maro, untreated sewage presence, playa de maro, ecologistas en accion, town hall, junta, water-quality analysis, samples, bandera azul, bandera negra