LIFE’S  A BEACH!! 

What do you do when you have a flat tyre? Most people would organise to get it fixed, maybe even buy a new tyre. The alternative however, is to just keep pumping air into it whenever it gets a bit soft. 

In Mijas, we have 14 kilometres of coastline, and whilst In know that there is also some rural tourism, the vast majority of people come here to enjoy the beaches, and spend a considerable amount of their holiday time there. 

On Sunday 19th February, Angel Nozal, former Mayor of Mijas, and a number of his team took a stroll along the entire 14 Km of the Mijas coastline to see what the state of play is with the beaches. We haven’t had the worst of winter storms this year, but I was disturbed to see just how much of the beach has been again washed out to sea.  

So, what does Mijas do? Instead of fixing the puncture they just keep putting more air into it whenever it gets a bit soft. Every year thousands of tons of sand are brought to the Mijas beaches to replace what has been returned to the sea by mother nature.  Sometimes they even have to do it twice as we often get another storm after the Easter top up, and we want the beaches back for the summer. Many of the coastal municipalities are trying to find a more satisfactory solution such as Benalmádena, Fuengirola,  and Marbella, but Mijas just prefers to keep bringing treated river sand to the beaches a couple of times a year. 

No I know what you are going to say: “You can’t fight nature.” That is very true, but we do all sorts of things to minimise the effects of nature on a daily basis. We cut the grass to stop the garden getting overgrown. Some people even go for artificial grass to maintain a nice look all year round.  We carry umbrellas in the rain to that we don’t get soaked from the head down. We put wind breaks up so that we don’t get sand blasted on a windy day on the beach, and so I could go on.  

Mijas would be a ghost town without it’s tourism and “Sun, Sea, and Sangria” is more than just an alliteration, it is an expectation for the many holiday makers.  

So, why has Mijas spent millions promoting itself as a tourist destination and at the same time refused to address the perennial issue of the disappearing beaches whilst our municipal neighbours are shouting very loudly about it? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Mijas and Madrid wear the same political colours and Mijas won’t place demands on Madrid for fear of a negative response. Let me be clear, I don’t know what the solution is, but over the last 7 years, the Mijas government has voted several times against having a study carried out by those who can give us the answers. 

I’m not much of a beach person, but Mijas needs its beaches. Mijas needs the tourism associated with them, and the businesses need people to want to come here. When will it be time to buy a new tyre rather than just pumping the old one up?  

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