Other projects of the Beaches Round Table
Barcelona’s beaches are urban beaches that have traditionally been managed as quality municipal open spaces where priority has been given to providing a good service to users. The new environmental, social and economic reality of the city, within the framework of the new European and Mediterranean requirements on integrated management of coastal areas and other aspects such as climate change, resilience and ecosystem management, imposes the need to update the current management model for Barcelona’s beaches.
The Beaches Round Table was created in 2017 as an internal City Council forum to rethink the management model for Barcelona’s beaches, bearing in mind that the city’s beach capacity was reaching its limit. The aims and objectives set out in the Round Table were validated in the participatory forum of the Coastal Plan in December 2018.
What are we doing?
The projects to be developed and deployed during the bathing season have been reviewed and updated every year since 2018. At the end of the season, a review is carried out to detect any needs for improvement.
One of the most important projects carried out in 2022 was the definitive approval of the byelaw amending the Byelaw of 27 November 1998 on the use of public streets and spaces in Barcelona to ban smoking on the city’s beaches. The data collected by the Beaches Information Service (SIP) during the season indicate that the measure has been very well received, as the total percentage of people smoking on the beaches was 0.97% and has fallen by 24% from June to September, and the level of satisfaction with the initiative has been high, with an average score of 8 out of 10. Given the results obtained through monitoring, the initiative is considered to have been a success, bearing in mind that this is the first year of the regulation and that the municipal will, in this respect, has been to prioritise information and awareness-raising actions for users on the problems associated with tobacco.
Other important strategic projects carried out in the last year have been the setting up of a new purple point on the beaches of Barcelona, which has offered a service to raise awareness, prevent and provide attention to gender-based and LGBTI-phobic violence in this area; the creation of a working group to improve the Fòrum bathing area, and the implementation of a package of measures to improve the assisted bathing area. All three projects have yielded very positive results throughout the season.
