/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/DDEGH2DPUJDZBHSFPGFWF37CQ4.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1)
The Barcelona City Council has had to redistribute, for the first time, dozens of bathers after this afternoon two of the beaches of the Catalan capital registered a large volume of bathers. Last Monday was the first day that the recreational bath was allowed on the beaches of Barcelona after entering phase 2 of the de-escalation. The week started rainy and the beaches were well below their capacity. But the good weather this Friday has encouraged attendance and this afternoon municipal workers have had to redirect dozens of users from the beaches of Nova Icària and Bogatell since social distancing could not be respected.
On Monday, 18 video sensors began to be placed on the ten Barcelona beaches. This technology will be installed this weekend and will allow, in real time, to know the occupation of the entire coastline. Until the video sensors finally come into operation, the beach reporters and the Guàrdia Urbana are in charge of calculating the number of people on the sand and distributing the bathers on the beaches. It was precisely this Friday when they had to act. The calculations of the informants and agents have concluded that the Bogatell and Nova Icària areas had an occupancy of between 60% and 80% of the capacity now permitted. This percentage triggers the alarm called the “orange indicator” (above it is only the red one) and the municipal workers have had to intervene, redirecting users.
Images of crowded beaches have soon started to go viral on social media. Some of them have been made with telephoto lenses, which make the image much flatter creating an optical illusion where people in the sand are much more concentrated than they actually were.
According to the Barcelona City Council, to guarantee social distancing, there can only be between 25,000 and 38,000 people in the total of the ten beaches in the city, since each user uses between six and nine square meters of sand.
The City Council has been fencing the beaches of Ciutat Vella –Somorrostro, Barceloneta, Sant Miquel and Sant Sebastià all week – and will only allow access through certain points from where the capacity will be controlled. These are precisely the beaches that have had the most influx in other years. This year, without tourists, it seems that Barcelonans prefer Nova Icària and Bogatell.
–
