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Summer is beginning to kick into gear with more holidaymakers steadily visiting Spanish vacation resorts, even though the official start of summertime isn’t until Thursday June 20 and the school holidays have not begun yet.

 

Some places in Spain have been highlighting the ills and the dangers of tourist overcrowding for local communities, pricing them out of affordable housing to buy or rent. ‘Overtourism’ can also affect the safety of tourists themselves – the recent collapse of a popular beach restaurant in Mallorca took the lives of four people, including foreign tourists who were crowded onto the roof terrace of the unsafe building.

 

In response to the recent tourism debate in the run-up to summer, one place in the south of Spain has announced it will begin to limit some tourist activities on its shores.

 

In 2024, the beaches of the Cabo de Gata nature reserve in the province of Almería in Andalucía may see bans on certain behaviour that locals and conservationist groups say presents a threat to the environment.

 

The Coordinadora de Asociaciones de los Pueblos del Cabo de Gata, an organisation which is made up of 13 neighbourhood associations from across this stretch of coastline, has requested that the use of jet skis in the coastal areas of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park be prohibited or restricted “as much as possible”.

 

As they allege, these jet skis “as well as posing a risk to the safety of bathers, are seriously damaging to the aquatic flora and fauna of this protected area”.

 

With the arrival of the good weather, this Natural Park “is invaded by jet skis,” they say in a letter addressed to the director of the park, Salvador Parra. The groups demand “coordinated” actions by the Park Management, as well as by the Environmental agents, the Nature Protection Service (Seprona) of the Guardia Civil and the Local Police so that “this use and abuse ceases definitively”.