The beaches of Barcelona begin today the 2024 bathing season marked by adaptation to drought and with the deployment of services corresponding to the mid-bathing season, which will be in operation from March 23 to April 1, all weekends. week of April and during the month of May. Starting on May 25, the high bathing season will begin with the activation of the rest of the services during extended hours, which will end on September 11.
On the beaches of the eastern area (Fòrum, Llevant, Nova Mar Bella and Mar Bella) the mid-season device will continue until September 29 and on the rest of the beaches (Bogatell, Nova Icària, Somorrostro, Barceloneta, Sant Miquel and San Sebastián), between August 22 and October 27, high season services will be maintained to accompany the activities of the America's Sailing Cup.
One of the new features of this season are the new services in the Forum's bathroom area, which will have social revitalization. At the end of April, a new program of activities aimed especially at young people will begin, such as aquagym, swimming, environmental, bicycle, radio workshops, etc.
In the middle season, the rescue and lifeguard service is activated with an initial deployment of 30 lifeguards and 11 watchtowers. On some beaches, the assisted bathing service is activated, aimed at people who have some limitation in their mobility and who need personal and technical help to access the water. The support service areas are located on the beaches of Sant Miquel, Nova Icària and the Fòrum bathing area.
The bathroom assistance service begins the season with the opening of the Nova Icària and Fòrum points. The one on Sant Miquel beach will operate in high season. This year this service incorporates improvements in materials, more personal resources and increases staff training hours.
Beach users will have beach bars, sun loungers and parasols linked to the beach bars service. At the beginning of the mid-bathing season, of the 13 beach bars on Barcelona's beaches, a total of 11 will already be set up. The rest of the beach bars will open in April.
This year the implementation of reusable cups will continue in all beach bars to reduce waste generation. During the mid-bathing season, the public toilets in Espigó del Gas, Somorrostro, Bogatell, Mar Bella, Levante and Fòrum will open, operating from 10:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and their hours will be extended until 7:30 p.m. in high season. The toilets in the beach bars are for public use and remain open.
Also today, the reinforcement of the sand cleaning service is launched, which operates throughout the year, but which is now being increased. The beach cleaning service operates every day with teams distributed in three work shifts, morning, afternoon and night, which are responsible for manual sand sweeping, sifting and emptying trash cans, among others.
Regarding the cleaning of the sea surface, the floating waste collection service is activated with the Ona Safe boats, two in the morning shift and two in the afternoon shift on Easter holidays, on weekends of the month of April and May and daily between June 1 and October 27.
As every year, the beaches have an information service for citizens. This year the information tasks will focus on the organization of sports uses of the beaches, information on smoke-free beaches and raising awareness about sexist violence through the daytime violet point, which will be available in high season.
Users also have instant information through the digital information panels located on the beaches of Mar Bella, Bogatell and Sant Miquel and through the Barcelona City Council beach website, which offer real-time information about the state of the sea, flags, temperatures and sunshine (incidence of UVA rays), the color of the flag, the quality of the water, ultraviolet radiation, the temperature of the water and air, the presence of jellyfish, the use of the beaches and locate the municipal services available on the beaches.
The beaches also have fifteen duly marked WIFI points to guarantee the quality of the signal on the coast.
The Center de la Platja, the environmental education facility on the marine and coastal area of Barcelona, will open its doors from April 2 to October 31. Located on Somorrostro beach, at the foot of the sand, it offers a program of free activities, from Tuesday to Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., which has the sea as its common thread and is developed with a broad vision of sustainability, offering activities related to the environment but also of a more social and economic nature.
As of April 1, the beaches unit of the Urban Police will come into operation. This operational unit, made up of more than 100 agents, will be deployed until the end of October. It carries out patrols on the ten beaches that make up the seafront of Barcelona and focuses specifically on preventing and acting on all those phenomena that occur on the Barcelona coast.
From the headquarters located in the joint office building of the Guardia Urbana and Mossos d'Esquadra on Passeig Joan de Borbó, from the module on Barceloneta beach and from the module located on the breakwater of Bogatell beach, this unit controls and monitors all phenomena that are detected in the beach area.
The framework of action of the Urbana group of beaches includes the control of infractions related to activities contrary to the rules of coexistence and civility, as well as the uses of public roads, noise pollution, waste and beach bars; prevention and action against criminal offenses, such as thefts, robberies with violence and intimidation, robberies with force in parked vehicles, processing and collection of complaints; the control of personal mobility vehicles in the beach area; assistance to victims of criminal offenses, care for lost children and collaboration in first aid; and maritime police functions.
The police members of these groups patrol on foot, with scooters, with four-wheeled vehicles, on bicycles, with “quad” type vehicles specially adapted for driving on the sand and with two semi-rigid boats (6.5 and 7.5 meters). respectively), which allow improving surveillance and control tasks, both on the beach and also on the breakwaters.
This year the deployment of the measures to regulate and organize the sports use of Barcelona's beaches, which were approved in January 2023, continues. The areas for the practice of free sports without time limitations and areas for the practice of sport of organized activities, with schedules established depending on the beach season.
With regard to the practice of free sports, coinciding with the beginning of the mid-bathing season, these activities have once again been limited to the enabled spaces reserved on the beaches of Sant Miquel, Somorrostro, Nova Icària and Bogatell, adapted to the progressive loss of sand that beaches experience every year. Even so, 6 areas enabled for this purpose will remain, with 31 courts that are added to the existing ones (7 volleyball courts, 1 soccer court.
Regarding the practice of organized sports, 7 volleyball courts have been set up, bringing the total to 10. For any organized activity you must request permission.
Surfing, paddle surfing and windsurfing are allowed all year round. During the medium and high bathing season, these sports must be practiced outside the exclusive bathing area for bathers delimited with buoys. Access to the outside of the buoy area must be done through the channels with beacons for the entry and exit of boats to the beaches. This year four new channels will be enabled on the beaches of Sant Miquel, Nova Icària, Bogatell and Nova Mar Bella.
Since the summer of 2022, the city's beaches are smoke-free beaches, a regulation definitively approved that declares all the city's beaches as smoke-free spaces and to this end establishes the prohibition of the consumption of tobacco products and the use of susceptible devices. of nicotine release in these spaces.
Despite the measure, cigarette butt waste is still present on the beaches and that is why awareness messages continue to be reinforced.
Due to the declaration of a state of emergency due to drought, showers and footbaths are out of service on all beaches as a water saving measure. The toilet services will have water but users will be informed so that they make responsible use of it and avoid wasting it.
To avoid the progressive loss of sediment experienced by the beaches, Barcelona's coastline has a series of coastal protection infrastructures, such as emerged breakwaters and submerged breakwaters. Although they contribute to avoiding the loss of sand, they are not enough to prevent the waves and currents from continuing to trigger a retreat of the coastline until leaving beach widths that in many points become critical, due to being insufficient, especially in some seasons. of the year. In recent years, Barcelona's beaches have lost sand at a rate of 30,000 cubic meters per year.
To alleviate the problems of beach erosion and maintain its availability of space and guarantee its recreational and protective function, a series of strategic movements of sand are carried out annually, redistributing it from points with a certain accumulation to points with a deficit.
This year the Port Olímpic will carry out dredging of its mouth to maintain operation with a forecast of extracting close to 17,000 cubic meters, which will be used to recharge the beaches of Barceloneta and Somorrostro and the section of the beach of Nova Icària affected by the works on the Gregal dock of the Port Olímpic.
Once again, the beaches of Barcelona have once again obtained the Biosphere tourism sustainability certification, which recognizes tourism operators who are committed to responsible and respectful management of the environment, culture, working conditions, gender equality and social and economic return, and, therefore, promotes a more balanced and sustainable tourism model in its area.
