- Protocol.The beaches will open with capacity (even supervised by drones) and control in the area of hammocks and umbrellas
One of the biggest reliefs that phase 2 of the de-escalation envisages in the coastal areas is to go to the beach to sunbathe and bathe. But this daily activity in the summer months on the coast is also disrupted by the Covid pandemic. The municipalities of the Valencian coast are forced to make heavy investments to adapt their beaches to the new security measures. That is when, in many cases, the health crisis caught them without having been able to mitigate the destructive impact of the September Dana and the temporary Gloria.
The Generalitat Valenciana urged the Institute for Tourism Quality to prepare a complete protocol to serve as a guide for the consistories, to which this responsibility is delegated. A week after going public and one step away from Phase 2, the localities have had to adapt the protocol to their reality and, in some cases, this advance has caught them off guard.
The most striking case is Benidorm , which has already announced that it will delay the opening of the bathroom on its beaches until June 15, but has already advanced that it will set hours and will not be allowed at noon.
The mayor, Toni Pérez , will keep the beaches closed "out of responsibility" and until safety can be guaranteed in the sandbank and bathing areas. In addition, with a capacity reduced to 50%, you can go in the morning and afternoon split hours with closings at noon and at night that will serve to clean and disinfect the items in common use.
"The beach is a right and the more people who can enjoy it, the better," Pérez pointed out, explaining that the split shift favors the mobility of users and a greater number of bathers can access the beach during the day. There will be control of capacity, flows and direction, a safety distance of two meters between people, distances of more than four meters with the sea line and the setting of a shift for its use. But everything is nearing completion. "Until we can offer maximum safety to users on our beaches, we will not open them," said Pérez.
Benidorm is not the only town that has made this decision. Municipalities such as Alcossebre or Moncofa , in the province of Castellón have already warned that they will need a few more days to finalize their protocols. In both cases, its coastline was severely punished by Gloria.
Individual parcel kit
It will open its Gandía beaches on Monday, with a lifeguard and surveillance service and more police presence. The consistory has installed entrance and exit footbridges for bathers, but the space will be divided up by each one of them. A series of k it will be provided to guarantee the individual space "in an intuitive way, respecting each other" and to disinfect and clean the sand every day, explains the mayor of Tourism, Vicente Mascarell.
For the time being, and until the summer progresses, they will keep the bathrooms, the sinks, the showers and the children's games closed. But the beach bars begin to operate under the same security measures as the rest of the hotel establishments.
Drone surveillance
There will also be no subdivision on the beaches of Sagunto, but the capacity will be monitored with drones, which will collect the data and report the situation to the Local Police and surveillance services, "explains the mayor, Darío Moreno.
In addition, they study the sectorization of the sand to establish entrance and exit corridors or the delimitation of an area to walk, but the subdivision is not contemplated. "We appeal to the responsibility of the users; on the beach of Puerto de Sagunto we have approximately 100,000 square meters of useful beach and we have never had an excessive overcrowding," stressed the Councilor for Beaches, Roberto Rovira.
What they will do is increase the rescue personnel and the Beach Police service, which will have citizen security patrols to avoid crowds.
Signs and surveillance personnel
In the case of the beaches of the city of Valencia, the Valencia City Council has signaled safe corridors, entrance and exit footbridges and signs in all the bathing areas that will inform that the minimum permitted distance between hammocks will be 2 meters; between shafts of umbrellas, a minimum of 4 meters, and between users and the shore of 6 meters.
In addition, a team that will work on the beachfront to reinforce information to users has been hired in an extraordinary way. The capacity will be controlled by drones from the Local Police and all the available services, for which the cleaning staff has been reinforced, at a cost of 690,000 euros.
10 million investment
To contribute to the expense of adapting the beaches, Turisme Comunitat Valenciana has reinforced this year its support to the municipalities with an investment of 10 million euros. Seven of them have been destined to replace the damage suffered by the tourist infrastructures after the stormy glory of January. The rest, between 1.5 and 2 million, has been destined to launch an "emergency" contracting of access control elements to provide municipalities with more gateways to organize entry and exit flows on the beaches, as well as other elements to safeguard the minimum social distance.
Blue flag
The Generalitat has ensured that "the excellent quality of the water sets the tone in practically all the beaches" of the Valencian Community during a meeting with some twenty coastal municipalities (those with more than 20,000 inhabitants and blue flag) and with the Valencian Federation Municipalities and Provinces in which the preliminary results of the Beach Water Quality Status have been presented.
This has been shown by the Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition, Mireia Mollà, who has transmitted a message of tranquility to the municipalities and has highlighted "the exhaustive controls, with a periodicity that reaches twice what required by state regulation, to preserve the safety of bathers and offer all guarantees in health matters. "
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