British tourists are warned to avoid 48 ‘black flag’ Spanish beaches contaminated with sewage and waste discharges. Is YOUR summer vacation destination on the list?

British tourists have been warned not to visit nearly 50 ‘black flag’ beaches in Spain.

Spanish environmental group Ecologistas en Acción named and shamed the worst offenders in a report highlighting problems including chemical pollution, marine debris, overdevelopment and sewage discharges.

Talamanca beach, in Ibiza, enters the list after being singled out for the catastrophic damage caused to underwater plants by ships illegally anchored off the coast and by a treatment plant that pumps salty wastewater into the sea.

El Amerador beach in El Campello, just north of Alicante, received one of 48 black flags from Ecologistas en Acción due to disease-causing faecal pollution attributed to a nearby pumping station in poor condition.

The organization highlights two recent cases of human excrement entering the sea on the Costa Blanca beach, one in March and the other in April.

The Canary Islands, where thousands of locals took to the streets in April in a protest against mass tourism to highlight issues such as ocean pollution, also take a beating in the report.

A spokesperson for Ecologists in Action, a grassroots confederation of 300 environmental groups, said: “One of the biggest problems we face is the ‘tourism’ and urbanization of our coast and this is a problem that especially affects the Islands. Canary Islands”.

Claiming that its political leaders were prioritizing business interests in a “suicidal race” and boasting of record tourism when its local population was suffering from record poverty and unemployment, the organization stated: “The ecological footprint of the Canary Islands corresponds to that of a territory 27 times larger.

“In other words, we need a territory 27 times larger to satisfy all the demands of the economic and development model of the archipelago.”

In a horrifying description of the situation on the most popular of the eight islands among British tourists, he stated overnight: “In Tenerife, 57 million liters of wastewater are dumped directly into the sea every day, which is equivalent to 17 Olympic-size swimming pools with contaminated water.

‘The problem extends to the eight Canary Islands. Underwater emitters download 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year throughout the island archipelago.

“More than 90 percent of wastewater from urban, industrial and agricultural centers reaches the sea practically without treatment.”

The popular beach of Playa Blanca, in Lanzarote, receives one of the group’s black flags this year due to a wastewater discharge caused by a failure in a pumping station that led to the temporary closure of the beach in May.

Environmentalists in Action today warned that last month’s drama was not the first and described it as “common”, saying pump treatment managers had blamed the problem on people throwing wet wipes and nappies into the toilet instead of flushing them. to the trash.

The 48 black flags awarded to the country’s beaches in its latest report are divided into two per province.

Pellets identified as dangerous to marine and human life have been flagged as a problem on Tarragona’s Costa Dorada, which includes tourist centers such as Salou.

Further north, on the Costa Brava, private boats are blamed for damaging marine biodiversity.