Spain’s Costa Brava beaches rapidly shrinking as coastal erosion washes away more sand

Looking out onto the beach of Platja d’Aro, Josep has tears in his eyes. “I used to play and swim here as a kid, when the beach was twice as big,” the 48-year-old teacher says. Today, the main beach in the popular Catalonian holiday resort on Spain’s Costa Brava coastline is some 50 metres (164 feet) wide on average. In the 1980s, it was three times that size, according to a report in the La Vanguardia newspaper. Estimates differ and there are no official figures available, but everyone agrees that the beach has been getting “smaller and smaller” for decades, restaurant owner Aldo says. Beaches are also vanishing elsewhere in Spain, a country that depends heavily on the millions of holidaymakers from Europe and elsewhere that descend on its coastlines every year. But beaches are literally shrinking. Experts believe urban development is one of the reasons for the erosion. Protective dunes along the coast have been replaced by housing, hotels and marinas, preventing the beaches from expanding inward. “Natural beaches can easily adapt to climate change as they are able to retreat and rise when the sea level rises,” says Francesca Ribas, an associate professor at Barcelona’s Polytechnic University of Catalonia. But if buildings prevent the sand from shifting inward, the beach will disappear, she explains. Turning dunes into promenades has restricted the beaches’ adaptability and increased the risk of storm surges, Ribas says. River dams near the coast and the construction of marinas and other infrastructure near the sea are also fuelling erosion, she adds. We barely had enough room to put up a lifeguard chair Tania González, Montgat city councillor, after a storm this year The phenomenon is not unique to Spain, with beaches disappearing in coastal regions from California and Florida to Turkey, Brazil and Australia’s Gold Coast. Driven by climate change, “sea-level rise and coastal shifts could wipe out nearly half of Earth’s sandy seashores by the end of the century”, according to a 2020 study published in the Nature Climate Change journal. The city administration of Barcelona estimates that some 30,000 cubic metres of sand are being washed away there every year, some 10 per cent of its beaches. “I was completely surprised when I noticed massive regression on some beaches in the Llobregat Delta south of Barcelona a few years ago, an area that had not had any problems with erosion so far,” Ribas says. Several international studies carried out between 1984 and 2015 using satellite images found some 25 per cent of beaches worldwide affected by chronic erosion, she says. In Spain’s Catalonia, as many as 65 per cent of beaches in the region shrunk between 1956 and 2019, according to the Cartographic and Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC). According to Greenpeace, the beach in Montgat, a town north of Barcelona, has lost nearly 75 per cent of its sand since July 2023 alone, decreasing from 25,000 square metres to 6,400 square metres in size. The town even considered cancelling the summer season following a particularly devastating storm earlier this year. “We barely had enough room to put up a lifeguard chair,” Tania González, the city councillor in charge of environmental affairs, told the El Periódico newspaper. The situation has since improved somewhat, and the Montgat beach, which used to measure some 50 metres a decade ago, has grown back into a two-metre-wide strip. For mayor Andreu Absil, that is no reason to rejoice, however. The town was forced to close all restaurants and bars along the beach because of the erosion, he says. Coastal erosion has alarming consequences, particularly for Spain’s tourism industry, one of the main sources of income in Catalonia and beyond. Ribas also highlights the risks for a “very valuable ecosystem”. “Beaches are the best possible protection against storms for the adjacent cities, as they absorb the energy of the waves,” she says. “If there is no beach, storms have a much more destructive effect.” More people in Catalonia and other affected coastal regions across Spain are joining forces to raise awareness and call for action to address the problem. A group of people recently formed a human chain in Valencia to draw attention to disappearing beaches, while the SOS Costa Brava organisation put on an open-air theatre performance near Platja d’Aro to illustrate the ecological consequences of rampant urban development. Attitudes are shifting, not only in Spain but worldwide, Ribas says. In Spain, stricter building regulations are now in place in many parts of the country and the coastal law has been tightened, she says. However, construction continues along the coast, with many building illegally. We have to give back to the sea what we have stolen from it Francesca Ribas, associate professor, Polytechnic University of Catalonia Pau Bosch, vice-president of SOS Costa Brava, an umbrella organisation for 25 environmental groups, says the organisation’s efforts to prevent further building projects are paying off. A master plan for the protection of various conservation areas along the coast that were supposed to be destroyed has been approved in Catalonia and other regions, he says. However, there are still plans to build a total of 40,000 new homes and hotel complexes in 22 municipalities on the Costa Brava, “which will have a very negative impact on the coastline and the sea”. To stop erosion, authorities have brought in sand from regions as far away as the Sahara desert to fill up the declining beaches. But those efforts, branded by ecologists as “patchwork”, are to be reduced in future, partly because of a huge global sand shortage. Other efforts to combat the problem included putting up protective structures that only brought short-term relief or were even counterproductive. Ribas believes there is only one way to save Spain’s beaches. “We have to give back to the sea what we have stolen from it,” she says. “We need to restore the original dune systems and, if necessary, dismantle beach promenades and rebuild them further back.” Renaturation, the researcher believes, is the only option, even if it may prove unpopular.

Spain’s Costa Brava beaches rapidly shrinking as coastal erosion washes away more sand

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Beaches are getting smaller in Spain, especially in the Costa Brava, where coastal erosion has even seen sand brought in from the Sahara

Beaches are getting smaller in Spain, especially in the Costa Brava, where coastal erosion has even seen sand brought in from the Sahara