Storms hit the Andalusian coast and eat up the sand on the beach in Malaga and Granada

• Tourism The storm hits the tourism sector on the Andalusian coast on the eve of Holy Week

This year the rain has been hard to come by in Andalusia and when it has finally arrived, it has done so with great virulence and accompanied by strong gusts of wind that have affected a good part of the Andalusian coast.

On this occasion, the

has hit the provinces of Malaga and Granada intensely, causing significant damage to some of their beaches, and has left mountains of invasive algae on those of Cádiz, such is the case of La Línea de la

.

What happened puts the focus, once again, on the need to adopt measures, sooner rather than later, to protect the Andalusian coastal strip and stop the increasingly evident recession of its coastline.

In municipalities such as

, in Malaga, they are committed to building breakwaters in front of their beaches, even financing from the City Council, but the projects are blocked pending the final decision of the central government.

In December of last year, the water and the wind devastated the beach of El Portil, in

(Huelva), where the sea swallowed around 200 cubic meters of sand.

Months earlier, in April, the coast of Almeria was affected by another storm that severely punished both the sandbanks of the capital itself and those of such touristic municipalities as

, Mojácar, Carboneras or Adra.

Last March it was the Costa del Sol that was left practically without beaches at the gates of Easter.

Every season the same story repeats itself.

The storms punish the coast, the beaches lose

, the streets are flooded and dirty, the neighbors and the tourism sector throw up their hands, and the town halls come face to face with the imperative need to allocate resources extra to remove the dirt from public roads, prepare the coastline, clean it and replace the sand that the waves have carried away, which almost always means taking a significant bite out of the municipal budget.

the beach bars

The continuous storms that hit the Andalusian coastal strip cause serious damage both to public infrastructures (walkways and pedestrian access, toilets, showers and even pipes and sanitation) and to private facilities (chiringuitos, terraces, homes on the beach, etc.) .

Today they have become a terrible threat and a headache not only for the mayors of the municipalities in the affected areas, but also for those who live from tourism.

up in the air

and has considerably reduced the beaches of

, among others.

In the capital of Malaga, the City Council has estimated that around 900 hours of labor will be necessary to remove broken pipes and install new pipes;

remove the affected walkways, clean them and adapt those that can be recovered;

condition the modules and showers, and replace the damaged signage.

Marbella and Estepona

In Marbella, the town hall has quantified the damage caused by the last storm at half a million euros and its mayoress,

, has once again pointed out the "negligence" of the Government of Pedro Sánchez, whom he blames for not having undertaken and to the construction of a series of breakwaters off the Marbella coast to curb the waves and minimize the loss of sand.

Meanwhile, the mayor of its neighbor Estepona,

, demanded that the Coastal Demarcation of Andalusia take the necessary steps so that the city council can carry out the projects in defense of the coast.

But, beyond the material damage and the cost of its repair, the increasingly intense storms are putting at risk the goose that lays the golden eggs, tourism, a key sector for the Andalusian economy.

Why has it come to this situation?

There is no single cause, without a doubt, that is a question -perhaps the only one- in which the administration, neighbors and environmental groups agree.

It varies from one region to another but it has its roots, on the one hand and how could it be otherwise, in

that brings with it increasingly virulent storms;

and on the other, in how the coastal municipalities have developed, the way in which they have been built, the industries that have been installed in each enclave, the consumption habits or even the crops for which they have opted.

"The dynamics of the coast have been broken," explains the president and spokesman of the Verdemar group of Ecologists in Action,

, to EL MUNDO .

In the Bay of Algeciras, for example, the Palmones or Guadarranque rivers deposited tons of sand at their mouths, but

, the extraction of aggregates for construction, transfers and the replacement of traditional crops in the area such as rice by others "more fashionable" such as avocados or the transfer of sand to Gibraltar, together with the occupation of the coastal strip by thermal, petrochemical and steel mills, have led to disaster on the beaches of the bay, laments Muñoz.

There's a solution?

The Verdemar spokesman wants to think so, but "we have to look to the future, we have to start acting" and recover spaces for the sea that have been taken away in recent years.

At this point, everyone has their vision and the placement of

to reduce storm damage is one of them.

In some places the breakwaters would be a valid solution but not in others, says the representative of Verdemar.

The issue is not black or white and each case should be analyzed, he concludes in this regard.

Thus, while some environmental groups do not view certain types of breakwaters with a bad eye, the central government does not agree with municipalities such as Marbella, Estepona or La Costa, convinced supporters of the benefits of these constructions, and keeps their projects on

standby

.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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