Storms Aline, Bernard and Ciaran have taken their toll on numerous beaches in the form of sand loss or barefoot walks. In Barcelona, work began yesterday to repair the wall of the Nova Mar Bella promenade, which gave way due to the impact of waves of more than three meters and wind gusts of 70 km/h, and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona has accelerated the dismantling of coastal equipment to avoid worse damage. In other municipalities, such as Badalona, Pineda de Mar and Altafulla, the problems on the beach have reached the political arena.
In Badalona, the gregal storm has had a double effect: On the one hand, it has swallowed a large part of the Coco beach and caused a height difference of up to three meters, but on the other hand, it has filled the beach with sand of the Barca Maria, one of the most punished by the usual storms from the east. From the Consistory, councilor David Mejía describes the Ministry's passivity as "incomprehensible" and demands solutions: "Otherwise, we would be faced with clear evidence of omission for political reasons".
In this sense, the mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, has addressed the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, to whom he has warned that the regression is already affecting all the city's beaches and that it is beginning to barefoot a part of the boardwalk. At the end of September, they notified the General Directorate of Coastal Demarcation in Barcelona of the incident, "but unfortunately we did not get a satisfactory response".
In the Maresme, the central beach of Pineda de Mar has once again run out of sand and some structures have appeared that had been buried for years and that belonged to the old barracks of the Civil Guard. The mayor, Xavier Amor, also calls for urgent action. On the other hand, the works on the Premià de Mar beach consolidation project have also been affected; the storm has destroyed the road that took the trucks to build the planned breakwaters.
On the Costa Daurada, in addition to towns such as Cambrils, Roda de Berà and Tarragona, the storm has once again punished the promenade of Altafulla, where the problem has turned into a political conflict for years. At the end of the previous mandate, a motion of censure sent by the current mayor to the opposition was justified above all by the alleged inaction in the face of the effects of the climate emergency on the maritime front. In this latest storm, the City Council tried to slow down the effects by filling a section of the promenade with rocks. "In the midst of the electoral campaign, 20,000 m3 of sand were poured that were supposed to last two years and have lasted five months", laments the new mayor, Jordi Molinera (L'Eina-ERC), who was the subject of the motion of censure. A study by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), currently in preparation, will determine what the structural action should be.
