Beaches in Spain belong to nobody and everybody – one of the few things that Franco’s regime got right, but the trouble is everybody thinks than they can have a slice and stake it out.

The phenomenon of people sending out grandad, who never sleeps, to stake out a front-line spot on the beach has long been the bane of beaches, because as the sun rises, you see a forest of vacant beach brollies with their owners not having the slightest intention of using them until around eleven after an unhurried breakfast.

Almuñécar’s Benavides was the first to clamp down on this, instructing the municipal police to confiscate any unoccupied beach brolly and folding, beach chair with their owners having to pay a fee to get them back.

The idea caught on along the coast but the Granadino is a cunning creature and famously reluctant to part with cash, so they bought the cheapest set from the local bazar China and left them to stake out their place. Then they would turn up with their decent beach-storming equipment and who cares if the rickety ones disappeared as it was cheaper to buy new decoys than to pay the fee of 30 euros. Town Halls are left with an ever-growing collection of beach equipment that nobody wants.

Now the problem on the beaches of Salobreña is that the Madrileños or Granadinos turn up with veritable bedouin-looking tents instead of a simple wind break, fully enclosing all four walls, using sheets of plastic.

The Town Hall is not happy. The Councillor for Beaches, Luis Cano, says that they have been putting up with these tent cities springing up each morning for the whole of summer so far, especially in front of La Guardia (the hamlet not the police).

What you need to remember was the area between the Peñon and La Guardia used to be sugar cane and there were jerry-built huts (chozas) all along where the canes met the beach, which were used each summer, so it is kind of ‘in the blood’ of the Salobreñeros.

So the dawn-sprouting umbrellas have been replaced by the tent city a little later in the morning. The umbrella forest started to disappear because the beach-tidying crew with their tractor got tired of having to swerve in and out of them and told beachgoers to move them or lose them.

Now, the tents, because that is what they virtually are, block everybody’s view and encumber beach walkers or other bathers trying to get to the water. The Councillor considers that if somebody wants to mount one, then mount it further back, if they want them closer to the shore, then they must open the sides up – lifeguards need to see the shore and they can’t.

There is, in fact, a bylaw which says that you can’t completely enclose a wind break-cum-tent, which according to Article 23.1 will cost you 300 euros. But the Town Hall prefers to warn rather than fine them until their eyes bleed. A municipal police officer walks up and says “Naughty!” and “Open it up or you will be fined” and miraculously, they are opened up… until the officer goes, admits the Councillor.

(News: Salobrena, Costa Tropical, Granada Andalucia – Source/Photo; MJ Arrebola)

Keywords: Tents on the Beaches, Fines, Warnings, Problem, Obstructs Lifeguards, Tractor

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