Becoming a global problem

Spain’s coasts suffer from “beach death”

The Platja d Aro on the Costa Brava

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/travelpeter - stock.adobe.com)

More and more coasts are suffering from "beach death", especially in Spain. Platja d'Aro, for example, has been getting "smaller, smaller and smaller again" for decades, as local restaurant operator Aldo puts it. There are no official figures.

Experts believe that one reason for this is that coasts have been built right up to the beach. Protective dunes often no longer exist. On a shoreline that has remained natural, the beach would simply move slowly inland - which is not possible if it has been built on right up to the sea.

Only 50 instead of 150 meters wide
48-year-old Josep has tears in his eyes as he looks out from the promenade onto the beach in Platja d'Aro in northern Spain. "I used to play and swim here as a child, the beach was twice as wide back then," says the teacher. The newspaper "La Vanguardia" recently wrote that the Platja Gran, the "big beach", which is now a good 50 meters wide on average, was three times as wide in the 1980s.

I used to play and swim here as a child and the beach was twice as wide back then.

Strandbesucher Josep

"Beaches that have remained natural can easily adapt to climate change, as they are able to retreat and rise as the sea level rises," says Francesca Ribas from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya in Barcelona. However, if the beach cannot move because of all the concrete, it will disappear.

Beaches are shrinking

Between 1984 and 2015, around 25 percent of beaches worldwide were affected by chronic erosion. This is based on estimates from satellite images. The Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC) determined that as many as 65 percent of all beaches recorded in this region (319 out of a total of 489) shrank between 1956 and 2019.

In other coastal areas, such as California and Florida, Turkey, Brazil and the Gold Coast in Australia, beaches are also shrinking. One factor here is climate change.

Barcelona: 30,000 cubic meters of sand washed away
Under conditions characterized by climate change and rising sea levels, "half of the world's sandy beaches could have disappeared by the end of the century", according to a study published in the journal "Nature Climate Change". The city of Barcelona estimates that 30,000 cubic meters of sand are washed away there every year.

In Catalonia and other affected coastal regions of Spain, there are more and more people who do not want to stand idly by and watch the loss of beaches. In many places in Spain there are stricter building regulations and the coastal law has been tightened. In the picture: Montgat in Barcelona

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Alex Kiriuchkov - stock.adobe.com)

"One of the most remarkable cases is Montgat, whose beach has lost 90 percent of its sand," says the environmental organization Greenpeace. According to official figures, the total area of the beach there has decreased from 25,000 to 6,400 square meters since July 2023 alone.

Hardly any room for lifeguard chairs
In spring, the situation was so bad after a major storm that the town near Barcelona even considered canceling the summer season. "We almost didn't even have enough space to put a lifeguard chair," said Tania González, the councillor responsible for the environment, to the newspaper "El Periódico".

Beach bars closed
In the meantime, there has been a slight improvement. The beach, which was still around 50 meters wide ten years ago and had practically disappeared completely at the beginning of the year, is now at least a thin strip of around two meters again. This is no consolation for Mayor Andreu Absil: "We've had to close all the beach bars."

Coastal erosion has alarming consequences. Tourism is one of the main sources of income in almost all of Spain, including Catalonia. And it is heavily dependent on the beaches. That is why more and more people are campaigning to preserve the beaches.

But what solutions are there? Ribas sees only one real way out: "We have to give back to the sea what we have stolen from it." The magic word is renaturation.