Whose beaches are they anyway?

A beach full of people half a century ago and all in pursuit of what the beach and the sea had to offer. Simple pleasures, the fulfilment of which demanded no more than a towel or two. Oh, and a bucket and spade, depending on age, and maybe the odd lilo, which in those days were remarkable for being able to stay afloat, such was the sheer rubbery weight.

The beachgoers of two generations ago might have looked at what was behind the beach and wondered. One says might, as I suspect they didn't. Had they been on the beach some ten years previously, they would have noticed some dunes. In fact, they wouldn't have been able to miss them. The dunes were no more. Flattened into non-existence for development purposes, their disappearance in Can Picafort was not unique, as the coastal development that involved way more than the destruction of dunes came to acquire a term - Balearisation. There had never been anything on the scale there was anywhere on the planet, Mallorca in particular well outdoing the Costa Brava, which had been on a similar developmental path.

The coasts, to all intents and purposes, had been privatised. The land, to be fair, had been in private hands but had been considered pretty much worthless until the island (and Franco's technocrats) realised that mass tourism offered the means of economic transformation. Nevertheless, there were regulations governing dunes. For all the good that these regulations served.

The beaches themselves were a different matter. But it soon became apparent there was gold to be panned from both a natural and an unnatural resource. Where sandy beaches weren't available, they were created in some urban tourist areas. Holidaymakers expected sand, and entrepreneurs wanted sand. Enter, therefore, the sunlounger plus parasol. Lots of sunloungers and parasols. The beaches were being privatised, albeit (typically) through private-public collaboration.

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Town halls' responsibilities for beaches required recompense. Given permissions by the state, which ultimately owns all beaches, the town halls arrived at arrangements with contractors. Everyone was a winner. The state was paid by the town halls for the permissions, the town halls invited bidders and levied charges to contractors, the contractors charged the beachgoers, the beachgoers' previously simple pleasures became less simple but more comfortable.

This said, there were still those who clung to the simple pleasures and the convenience of going to the beach armed with only a towel, or a by now more robust umbrella, or a menagerie of inflatables, or some sort of tent. The seekers after simplicity, eschewing the comfort of a contractor's sunlounger, were themselves gradually occupying more and more beach thanks to all their paraphernalia. But this wasn't privatisation, something to be condemned as the small beach estates of sunloungers grew ever larger.

For instance, it must be some fifteen years ago when irate residents of Playa de Muro took the town hall to task for the sunlounger creep. The town hall in turn took contractors to task, the gold to be extracted from the sand having been evident because of the sunlounger wars between rival contractors - there were cases of vandalism. Had the residents been social media savvy back then, they would have hashtagged a protest across Zuckerberg and Musk platforms and the regular media would have descended in their droves. Mercifully, they weren't savvy.

You may recall the case of the occupants of two superyachts who disembarked and installed various items of comfort on a Cabrera beach eight summers ago (well, the crews installed these items for them). There was outrage. Privatisation of a protected natural space; Cabrera is a National Park. The environment ministry threatened dire financial consequences - a hundred grand fine was mentioned - but the ministry and everyone else soon forgot about it. However, an abiding image of this privatisation was its luxury appearance. All had been lost in terms of beach simplicity; it was only a matter of time before Balinese-style beds started to appear. And sure enough they have - in Palmanova, for example.

When people protest about beach overcrowding, it shouldn't be overlooked that much beach is taken up by the rows of sunloungers as well as by all the stuff that gets dragged on to beaches. Only some of this occupation, obviously enough, is commercially driven. But the gold in them thar beaches is no better highlighted than in Cala Major with charges up to 70 euros a day. In Can Pastilla, to give an example, it is estimated that 54,000 euros per day can be generated by full sunlounger occupancy. For June to August, this would be around five million euros.

Balearisation of the beaches.