In essence, if everyone does what they should, the use and enjoyment of Barcelona’s beaches this summer should not vary too much from the previous one. In the hands of the users, their common sense and responsibility make it so. This was made clear yesterday by the Barcelona City Council during the presentation of the beach plan that, if there are no last-minute surprises, they will enter that long-awaited phase two starting Monday, which, among other pleasures of life prior to the new normality, allows bathe and stretch on the sand.
The City Council has given the people of Barcelona and visitors the responsibility of respecting the safety distances in the sand to avoid the ridiculous spectacle of marking those grids with screens or ropes that define the authorized space to place each pareo or towel. Starting Monday, the entrance of phase 2 will be accompanied by the possibility of being on the beach with no other pretext than being. New surveillance cameras to be installed on top of the Mapfre tower in the Olympic Village will allow the capacity of the entire coastline to be controlled on one side and on the other. To this new video surveillance system will be added sensors that will be placed in each of the 15 access points to the beaches and that will make an approximate count of the people who enter and leave the sandbank. The City Council does not intend to put access controllers adding bathers and understands that it will be the users themselves who spread themselves by common sense throughout the length and breadth of the entire coastline.
Of course, this summer it will be impossible for everyone to be on the waterfront. It would be necessary to space out and fill the gaps that are usually free in the areas closest to the promenade. In any case, if everyone respects the sacred two meters of safe distance, there is sand for everyone.
The municipal managers expect that the user, the one who lives in Barcelona and the one who visits, will acquire from Monday the habit of consulting the website of the City Council before heading to a beach. They want that consultation to become another routine. The website will inform in real time of the capacity of each sandy area through traffic lights from red to green, depending on the influx, offering less crowded alternatives to go directly to the least crowded without having to reach a beach and find that at that time it is closed to step.
CONTROLLED ACCESS
The entrance to all the sandbanks will only be made through fifteen marked points
Predicting how many people will go to the beaches this summer is impossible. Therefore, the City Council is aware that the use will be adjusted to reality. It will depend on the final number of international and national tourists who come to Barcelona, and also on those from Barcelona who decide this year not to move and take advantage of urban beaches.
The City Council expects that concepts such as rush hour or the most crowded beaches will end, and as the staggered effect of the operations of exit and return of traffic, users learn to be much more flexible with the time slots of going to enjoy the sea .
There is no doubt that the most popular are the beaches of the Ciutat Vella, Barceloneta, Somorrostro, Sant Sebastià and Sant Miquel districts. And on them the masts for the barriers can be seen already on Monday in case it is necessary to close them. In recent weeks, while the coastline of the city center was crowded, the maritime strip of Sant Martí offered a very different image with the sands of Nova Icària, Bogatell, but especially Mar Bella, Nova Mar Bella, Llevant and the nearly empty Fòrum baths. . The City Council hopes that, taking advantage of the quality of the water in recent weeks, it will help many Barcelonans to rediscover some beaches unknown to them.
In the 15 entrances enabled to the coast, users will find information personnel, such as those who have seen the last weeks indicating to walkers and athletes what could and could not be done in phase 1.
THE NEW HABITS
The rush hour concept and crowded beach will yield to the continuous flow of bathers
These informants will have the support of the Guàrdia Urbana, which will have a secondary role in controlling the capacity of the beaches. The City Council trusts that by placing a simple rope between two wooden posts in the access, people understand that the capacity is full and cannot be passed. Only those behaviors of fragrant irresponsibility will be sanctioned.
The system that will be released on Monday in Barcelona is similar to that of Salou, which also has sensors and cameras to control the volume of people. A system that alerts with traffic lights if a beach is closed due to excess bathers. While in Tarragona, for example, it was promised to use a computer application, but it is not yet operational. A maximum capacity has also been set in the Platja d’Aro sandbanks, since the municipal technicians start from the idea that a family unit of up to six members occupies an area of nine square meters and that the distance between couples, groups of friends or family units must be two meters.
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