ARCHIVED - Proposal for urban beach in Cartagena rejected by Port Authority

Naturalists maintain that a 700-metre beach could be recovered near the Santa Lucía dock

A proposal made by the naturalists’ association ANSE to relocate the commercial activities at the Santa Lucía dock in Cartagena in order to create a large beach close to the city centre has been dismissed as “absurd” by the president of the Port Authority.

ANSE have asked the Town Hall to lend its support to their proposal to create a beach on the eastern side of the natural harbour, in the area where it was lost many years ago as the port expanded in Cartagena, asserting that this could be achieved by transferring the container port activity to Escombreras (a few kilometres further south, outside the natural harbour), where expansion work on the existing facilities started in 2011.

This, they say, would make it possible to recover a beach which would be compatible with the other activity in the port at the San Pedro dock, calculating that the result could be a swathe of sand 700 metres long and 20 to 25 metres wide. ANSE leader Pedro García maintains that this is not just a whimsical notion: after all, he reasons, if it is possible to recover half the bay of Portmán, which was severely contaminated by the landfill from mining concerns in the 20^th century, and where only around 1,000 people live, why should it not be possible to undertake a similar project in Cartagena?

The answer, according to Joaquín Segado, president of the Port Authority, is a logistical one. Quoted by regional newspaper La Verdad, Sr Segado explains that at present 81 per cent of the space at Escombreras is already occupied, and that the remaining 40,000 square metres would be insufficient to house the activity which currently occupies an area of 120,000 square metres in Santa Lucía.

In other words, economic activity would be forcibly lost by making such a move, with inevitable loss of employment as a consequence.

The only scenarios in which such an outcome could be contemplated, he adds, would be another enlargement of the port facilities at Escombreras, or the construction of the proposed “macroport” in the nearby bay of El Gorguel. This second project has been on the drawing board for over a decade but has met with considerable opposition from ANSE and other environmental groups, and is currently pending a decision from the European Commission on its environmental viability. Aware of a possible negative outcome, the Port Authority is already examining the options regarding a further amplification of Escombreras.

There is no doubt that the prospect of a large urban beach in Cartagena is an interesting and attractive one, and would further increase the city’s attractiveness as a tourist destination. But Cartagena emerged as an important population centre two millennia ago due to its importance as a trading port and to the wealth of minerals mined in the nearby mountains, and to undo the historical development of over two thousand years would be a complicated task to say the least!

Image: ANSE’s proposed beach can be seen on the left of the bay

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