Are we witnessing the end of the Dénia coast as we know it? It seems. But the truth is that we have already attended many Finnish. Or is it that the coast last Sunday was the same as that of a year ago? And what of a decade ago? And what about five years ago?
Dénia's coastline has been receding for years. Whether motivated by people's close decisions (port extensions, placement of breakwaters...) or by the global climate situation (Change, in capital letter), setback is a reality with which we have lived for years and that It doesn't look like he has any plans to stop.
not so long ago Bovetes, around the summer of 2008, a volleyball net was removed because the water was already reaching it, and what would be half of the playing field was completely under the sea. Although it is hard to believe, it was installed between the main entrance to the beach, the one of the Les Fonts shopping center, and the small breakwater on the left, about 200 meters away. An area that right now has less than 5 meters of sand. A couple of decades ago there was enough space to host volleyball matches.
And all those meters that have been lost to the sea have never been able to be recovered, no matter how hard they insisted. Provisional solutions may be given, but none that is definitive has yet been found or put into practice.
The recently lost sections
En Les Deveses we have experienced it very recently. Although she had already lost meters of beach, we have all seen her. We knew her. Before the Gloria (January 2020) there was sand in what is now a concrete wall. In the summer of 2019, he still sunbathed there. But not anymore.
The same happens in the famous stretch of Blay Beach, where the door of a development that used to face the beach now faces the sea (almost entering from either side). When it was thought of placing that element during construction, it made all the sense in the world: it was to go out to the beach. Because there was a beach! About 40 meters of sand during the last decades of the last century.
But also in the first 2000 there was a beach, although less. Little by little it receded, but it was there and you could walk from Les Brises to El Raset without having to touch the water. In 2010, if one day there were waves, the sea would already reach the walls. Finally, any hint of sand disappeared in that area of Blay Beach, being completely sentenced with the temporary glory that filled the place with rubble.
The door, then, already faced the sea.
The coastline we have inherited and the one they will inherit
What happened this week is nothing new. The walls had already fallen and nothing was going to stop the advance of the water. He has taken the logical step: enter. The current line is perhaps one meter closer to the houses. And tomorrow?
According to the visor presented by the Generalitat Valenciana to study the behavior of the coastline, if the climate change trend is not reversed, in the worst case scenario, the sea level would rise by more than half a meter between now and the end of the century. Therefore, our shore will be very different and will have receded a lot. The sea would advance until swallowing much more than a door. Or than a volleyball net.
It is not the end. It's an end.
I, who live in Valencia but have spent the summer for more than 25 years in Denia, in a Bungalow owned by my parents from 1982 to 2010, have seen everything and everything in terms of the beach line. In the 80s, the beach where we lived, which was on Playa de l'Estanyó, km 7 of the Las Marinas road, was made of pebbles and quite narrow. When we were walking along the shore towards Denia, the area of the restaurant L'Estanyó, the Noguera and further on, until we reached the breakwater at the height of Nova Denia, the beach was narrow, almost non-existent in some sections. But from that breakwater, where the Cova del Mero Restaurant, which is the Les Fonts area, the beach was very wide. But towards the end of the 80s that breakwater was cut, making it possible for the tides to deposit sand on the beaches located to the north of the breakwater, that is, from Nova Denia to the mouth of the Girona river. And in addition to getting wider, it stopped being a pebble beach. In the mid-90s there were a couple of years with very strong storms that swallowed up the beach temporarily, even partially destroying the few coastal dunes that were in that area of Km 7. But in successive years the dunes were recomposed, they even began to appear where I had never seen them and the beach began to widen again, even more than before. Now, after a few years of not spending the summer in that area and not having visited it for years, this summer I have verified that the beach, from the mouth of the Girona to Nova Denia, is much wider and with more dunes (in some sections even low rise) that I had never seen for more than 30 years. In conclusion, the sea takes the land that was stolen from it and returns to deposit the sand where it used to before the construction of urbanizations and/or breakwaters.
The fault is always the politicians! How easy we do everything. Nature moves, always, and if it has been built where no one should have allowed it, that is what happens!
50 years ago, the area of Las Marinas km 5 behind the current Consum was a swamp in winter, an area flooded by rain and the sea. Today the water is between 4 and 6 meters deep. The sea rises and falls since it exists and if something is man's responsibility it is to build where it should not, "clean" the beaches of the posidonia that accumulates on stormy days not only protects the sand and dunes further inland but also makes the bases for the growth of these dunes. If the beaches of Denia are leaving, it is for these reasons, not because there is Change with a capital letter. As another comment says very well, pressing that everything stays forever like on postcards is childish.
Monday 13 and the Mayor of Denia has not yet said what allegations he is going to make against his PSOE party that wants to confiscate houses and municipal land from all the residents.
GRIMALT wants to confiscate our houses
In the photos it can be seen that the one who confiscates is the Sea.
How right you are, Carmen, Denia was a natural port and when doing the port works, the water goes to the beaches, I say this for the hundreds of inhabitants on the front line so that they know the origin and also the solution. They already know . All the best
I don't agree with you, who gives the licenses to build on the beach? that's the problem
We should ask ourselves why climate change is killing some beaches while leaving others untouched for decades?
What beaches do not suffer changes after a storm? In which beaches does the rise in sea level affect? With and without climate change, they are natural phenomena that occur because nature works that way. Pretending that everything stays like the eternal summer postcard is childish.
It was an ironic comment, Luis
Thanks John, irony is always welcome. All the best
Benidorm, for example. Denia has to do with the expansion of the port. In Benidorm they expanded it and a new beach emerged; Mal Pas cove.
The same thing always happens. Some claim that we all pay for what only they enjoy.
Pere del tresmall?
It is an end that can be stopped if the political leaders and the Ministry take the appropriate measures with exempt reefs, for example as they are doing on the beach in Barcelona and they already did in 1965 on the beach of Las Teresitas in the Canary Islands. There are technical and ecological means at the same time. The only thing missing is the political will to put them up. And if not, they should talk to the Spanish engineers who already know it with the Italians or the Dutch who every year gain meters from the sea
We attribute everything to climate change, when the reality of what has been done is to expand the entire port area into the sea. It is normal for the water to spill over to the sides and eat the beach, where else will it go! The fault that Denia is left without a beach is the one who gave permission for the construction of all the mass that has gotten into the sea without measuring the consequences. But no, climate change is to blame for everything…..
It is not climate change. That is the easy excuse and that political incompetence is now trying to make fashionable.
Climate change is something much more complex that cannot justify everything.
The fault is that politicians are NOT up to the task. The citizen cannot be confiscated in his property as if nothing had happened. Who authorizes the ports? Who turns a blind eye to the coastal regression without providing a solution and above all protection so as not to harm citizens? Every meter of beach that has been lost should be paid for with the money of all the politicians and officials who have intervened in the Costas governments. We would see if solutions were taken soon. They have included their obligation to protect the coast and now they want us to pay for it with our assets. OUT INCOMPETENTS of the Administration NOW!!
It's not Climate Change, it's THEFT and incompetence!!!!
Strongly agree
I have not seen any of Denia in the street demonstrating or in Spain in general all anesthetized
They demonstrated to be able to come to the beach in a pandemic, their freedoms were curtailed, they said, and to be able to buy all those new constructions and the old ones also as real estate investments. How many people have you bought to put up for tourist rental later? They all thought the same. Buy on the beach and speculate with it. That the sea takes the beach? They don't give a damn.
It's Greed. It is built on the first line to sell later regardless of the consequences. They are highly coveted areas for that reason, you only think about the money that you are going to get. And others buy for real estate investment so you cry less. Here everyone thinks only about money, holding only politicians responsible is petty. The beach and the environment don't give a damn to everyone.
How right you are, Carmen, Denia was a natural port and when doing the port works, the water goes to the beaches, I say this for the hundreds of inhabitants on the front line so that they know the origin and also the solution. They already know . All the best