Montgat, the Spanish town stripped of beaches and income

Montgat, a town of 12,600 inhabitants located less than nine miles (14 km) from Barcelona, has become a prime example of the impact of climate change on the Catalan coast. In less than a decade, this location has lost almost all of its beaches. Previously, the railway line ran parallel to the beach, but now the tracks are just a few feet from the water. Sandy areas such as Can Tano, Montsolís and Toldos have disappeared. Other strands such as Les Barques have lost more than 70% of their sand. The situation is desperate in a municipality that, until recently, had beach tourism as one of its main sources of income. Spain’s Ministry of Ecological Transition has a plan on the table to build submerged breakwaters and prevent the last of the sand from disappearing. Even so, studies are still needed to start building what would be the last chance for Montgat’s beaches.

Joan has been walking along the beaches of his town for 30 years. “It’s a shame. Decades ago, the beach was three times what it is now,” he recalls as he puts on his flip-flops at the top of Riera de la Font. At that point, there is not a grain of sand. In fact, the stairs that used to go down from the promenade are suspended in the air. There is no beach. Just a few feet away, a security guard at a for-pay parking zone states the obvious: “Without a beach, fewer and fewer people come and, therefore, fewer people pay to park.”

The Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), which manages the beaches in the area, presented its study on climate change trends on Barcelona’s beaches in February. The data in the report was not encouraging: “The sea level of the metropolitan coast has not stopped rising and the waves are getting higher and higher,” it says. Since 2003, the sea level has risen by 5.6 mm per year and the rise in the last 25 years amounts to 14 cm (5.5 inches). The report pointed to Montgat as the most critical case in the entire metropolitan area, one that is the subject of an ongoing political dispute.

Rosa Funtané, of the separatist party Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), was mayor of Montgat between 2015 and 2019. Since then, she has been a member of the opposition. “Plenary session after plenary session, we ask for explanations not only about the disappearance of the beaches but also about the work on the promenade. We urge that things be done because we are losing heritage and economic activity without any reaction from the local government,” she says.

The spokesman for the leftist political group Montgat En Comú Podem, Daniel Fuentes, is also critical of the local authorities. “We know that the municipality does not have jurisdiction over the beaches, but we must try to recover them while halting the environmental impact,” he says. “This year the authorities have raised the IBI (a local property tax payed by homeowners) by 50%. An increase that is partly due to the fact there is a deficit from services such as the Blue Zone (for-pay parking spots) that no longer brings in the traditional revenue because tourists no longer come.” Fuentes says that the authorities are not addressing the problem of the beaches correctly and are trying to compensate the drop in revenue with an increase in the IBI tax, triggering local outrage.

The local authorities include a coalition between the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC), Som de Montgat and Junts. On May 23, the mayor, Andreu Absil (PSC), visited the beaches together with a Spanish government official, Carmen García-Calvillo, and the person in charge of coastal affairs, Ana Castañeda. The purpose of the visit was to assess the state of the promenade and the seafront. The first deputy mayor, Raül Abad (SOM), told EL PAÍS, “Of the five or six beaches that Montgat had, only two remain. We are waiting for a project similar to the one carried out in Premià de Mar where submerged breakwaters were installed. The project has been drafted, but the [central] Ministry is analyzing its environmental impact. We will have to wait two or three years for it to become a reality.”

The AMB report maintains that 391,383 cubic meters of sand are needed to minimally regenerate the beaches of Montgat — an Olympic swimming pool holds 2,500 cubic meters. “In addition to the project with the Ministry, we agreed with the AMB to install a hose and dredge the sand from the Masnou port. The problem is that this year, that sand has moved to the port of Balís in Sant Andreu de Llavaneres and the cost of bringing the sand is more expensive. We don’t have enough budget on our own,” Abad says.

In fact, the authorities have just spent €1.5 million on decontaminating a part of the coastal area to lengthen the promenade. These are outlays being made without tourism revenue to shore them up. “Since the pandemic, we have lost about €1 million each year due to the beach situation. We used to have five beach bars and each one paid €50,000 for a license to be there. Now there is no room for beach bars. People came to our beach, went to restaurants, paid for the Blue Zone parking area... In summer, we used to collect 80% of the year’s Blue Zone revenues. Now it barely gets to 30%,” says Abad. The municipal budget of Montgat is €15 million, so the drop in income from tourism is a blow. “The Ministry has prioritized municipalities such as Premià and Masnou and that is harming us,” he adds.

Silvia Capo runs the Banys Verge del Carme restaurant on the beachfront. “I think we had less sand last year,” she says. “This restaurant has been going for 97 years and I know that the future does not look good. I don’t think we will last many more decades. But, for now, they should leave us alone and let tourists come to Montgat,” he says.

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