Pioneering change of strategy in several of the municipalities of the Costa Daurada and the Ebro delta continually punished by increasingly intense and frequent maritime storms, due to the climate emergency. From repairing the extensive damage caused by the waves on the promenades every year, to dismantling the fixed cement and asphalt structures, renaturalizing part of the coastal façade developed decades ago and moving back inland to give more space to the beach and the sea.
A strategy that scientists also assure will be effective in protecting the coastline from rising sea levels. Hand in hand with the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, among the first that have already decided to take the step are the town councils of Vila-seca (Tarragonès), which begins remodeling works at the beginning of the year, Calafell, also this 2024, and Roda of Berà (Baix Penedès), although with the project still in the study phase. The City Council of l'Ampolla, on the delta coast, will also act in agreement with the Ministry in one of the areas most affected by the climate crisis, on the beach of l'Arenal, in a stretch of about two kilometers.
The political decisions, made by consensus between local administrations and the central government, with full powers in the maritime-terrestrial public domain space, coincide with the criteria of scientists. Something that is also new.
“They are infrastructures that have become obsolete, but it is important that socially understand the importance of adapting the coastal infrastructure to the rise in sea level and the increasingly frequent maritime storms,” explains Carles Ibáñez, scientific director of the Center in Eurecat Climate Resilience (Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya). “The coastline must be redesigned in an orderly and agreed manner and supra-municipal administrations must help municipalities make this transition,” adds Ibáñez.
Some town councils are beginning to realize that with the advance of the climate crisis it makes less and less sense to make million-dollar investments to rebuild the most vulnerable sections of their promenades and be forced to also request the contribution of tens of thousands of cubic meters of water each spring. sand on its unprotected beaches.
“The criteria changed after the Gloria storm, we are at a turning point. The Ministry for the Ecological Transition will no longer pay for repairs to boardwalks in the public domain. We are committed to structural solutions and we always try to reach agreements with the affected municipalities,” explains Antoni Espanya, head of Coastal Affairs at the Ministry in Tarragona. The intervention in the first four municipalities “will encourage other municipalities to renaturalize their coast,” adds Espanya.
The promenades are a great tourist showcase for the sun and beach municipalities. Emerging mainly in the seventies and eighties, the urbanization of a good part of the maritime façades took place just behind the beaches.
The Costa Daurada and the Ebro delta are especially suffering the consequences of rising sea levels and increasingly intense maritime storms. This explains, in part, why they are among the pioneer municipalities in a change of strategy that will foreseeably affect other stretches of the Catalan coast.
The urban context of each promenade is key to making its dismantling and renaturalization process viable or not. Above all, space is needed to be able to move back and give more accommodation space in each case to the sea and the beach. When it comes to coastal stretches with homes or other properties such as restaurants attached to the promenade, the situation becomes complicated. It is much more feasible to deconstruct a promenade, a space for public use, than to propose expropriations.
One of the municipalities most affected by storms, Altafulla (Tarragonès), has the problem of the urban context. Adjacent to its promenade, a huge tourist attraction, there are houses and commercial premises, including restaurants. Undoing it is unfeasible due to the enormous human and economic impact.
The last major maritime storm, in October, once again severely punished the Altafulla promenade. A study has been commissioned from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) to analyze the dynamics of the last six years of the coastline in the face of storms and decide how to act in the medium term.
The proposed solution, which will not be executed until the UPC study is ready in 2025, is the construction of a breakwater. Meanwhile, the municipal government (L'EINA-ERC and Junts) asks the central government to co-finance the remodeling of the promenade. “We know that Costas has said that it will not remodel any more promenades, but in other municipalities there are consensus solutions between city councils and Costas and we would like to reach an agreement,” explained Alba Muntadas, co-mayor of Altafulla, after presenting the commissioned study weeks ago. to the UPC.
The Pineda promenade (Vila-seca), on one of the busiest beaches on the entire Costa Daurada, a tourist enclave, will become one of the first scenarios where the paradigm shift will begin to become a reality at the beginning of 2024. . The coastline will recede about twenty meters. The project will begin to be visualized now, but it is the result of many years of work. The outlook is also long: the horizon is 2100, when sea level is expected to rise between half a meter and one meter.
The road will be eliminated and an area of dunes and vegetation will be created to protect the coastline. The investment, of close to 10 million euros, has received European funds. “If you look at La Pineda beach from the air, the vast majority of spaces are green or sandy areas, also the result of expropriations. We have been fighting for thirty years. For a beach to have a future, it must be re-naturalized,” reasons Pere Segura (Junts), mayor of Vila-seca.
Renaturalization will play a key role in protecting the coastal strip from rising sea levels. "It is a fish that bites the tail. If there is less space on the coast because it has been urbanized, the beach is more weakened by the force of the sea. And if the beaches are increasingly weakened, we do not have this natural barrier,” warns Ibáñez (Eurecat).
“If you add sand to a beach that is not in balance, the sand will end up being lost,” warns Espanya (Costas).
In Segur de Calafell (Baix Penedès) part of the Plaza del Mil·lenari will soon be demolished to make room for the beach. The Ministry for the Ecological Transition will finance the works, which have already passed all the administrative procedures. The action will help to stabilize the beach of Mas Mel, punished by the storms.
It will not be the only renaturalization action in Calafell. “We are evaluating others, there will be more,” explains Aron Marcos, Councilor for Urban Ecology. “The time has come to act, there is no alternative but to adapt to climate change, we have to deconstruct. If you explain it honestly, the neighbors understand it and people prefer to have more beach; “The promenade does not protect us,” adds Marcos.
In Roda de Berà they are also clear that the promenade must be dismantled and the Llarga beach, currently urban, must be renaturalized and travel back three decades. The project is still in a very embryonic state.
“Resilience must be worked on to turn a serious problem into an opportunity that involves an investment,” warns Ibáñez (Eurecat), a reference voice for strategies to confront the climate emergency from the Ebro delta. In a territory like the deltaic plain sea level rise will have an even greater impact if no action is taken.
