For groups interested in Botany, flora, traditional fishing methods and the landscapes of our Costa Tropical, the guided tour along the roads near the cliffs is a must.

Dining experiences are included in some of the visits offering the tasting of ‘tapas,’ set menus and, of course, local tropical fruits and juices.

For the sports minded, Salobreña’s tourism offers different possibilities, including municipal facilities and fees for groups for our football stadium, swimming pool, athletics track, tennis and paddle tennis courts…

Finally, for those who want to relax and enjoy the sun on the beach there is an offer for groups to hire deckchairs and beach umbrellas any time of year.

(News/Events: Salobrena, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

The volunteer also has to pay all the court costs, as well as a 2,800-euro fine, which if does not pay, will land him in prison for 45 days.

The incident occurred at the end of July on a beach belonging to the municipality of Lújar. The volunteer, who was on beach watch, spotted the 30k package off the Playa de Cambriles. He opened it up, extracted two smaller packages from within, and then phoned the police to report the find.

The original article does not say how he was discovered, but evidently, discovered he was.

(News: Motril/Lujar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

The carcass was discovered by locals in the early evening who reported the find to the police, who in turn contacted CREMA (Centro de Recuperacion de Especies Marinas). This institution deals with injured marine life, with the task of returning them to health and the sea.

In this case, apart from the adequate disposal of the carcass, they will conduct a necropsy to determine the cause of death.

One of the most interesting feats of this institution occurred in the year 2000 when a turtle was brought to them with a fractured skull and part of its lower jaw missing. It took ten months to returned the turtle, christened Robo Cop, to its natural habitat, but not before putting metal plates in its head and rebuilding its jaw with a substitute-bone resin.

As for co-ordination with other entities, the case of the Arctic seal that was found on a Malaga beach required a team effort between British Airways, The Royal Navy and the Junta de Andalucia, because its destination was the Northern coast of Scotland and it entailed car, train, aeroplane and ship transport.

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Dear Mr Darby

I attach the following letter, for publication in The Seaside Gazette:

Save this little gem of a beach
Spain’s first seven star hotel to be built here in Almuñecar? It is only human nature to want to believe that such a miracle might actually happen; to believe that someone might make the kind of massive investment that will reverse the economic decline and pull the
local economy out of the worst recession in decades.

Jesper Birkmann, of development company KEOPS/Bahia Fenicia, has certainly been making the most of these hopes in his “charm offensive” in the local press recently, publicising the hotel and residential housing development that his company, in association with Banyan Tree Holdings, is proposing to build on the Peñón del Lobo, between the Marina del Este and Cotobro.

Not everyone, though, has lost all sense of reality over this. The luxury hotel market is virtually on its knees at the moment, and here in Andalucia at least two ‘five star’ hotels in Marbella have gone out of business in recent years, as has the Bobadilla in Loja,
the Byblos in Mijas Costa, and Las Dunas near Estepona (which I believe was of a similar ultra-luxurious quality to that of the proposed new hotel)  Against this background, the building of a new ‘five-star luxury superior’ hotel would not seem to make much financial sense.
  
However, as two of the three “phases” of this whole development will consist of private luxury housing, one has to question the seriousness of Bahia Fenicia’s intentions with regard to the building of this new hotel. One also questions the seriousness of Banyan Tree/Angsann’s intentions too, unless some of the hotel’s ’200 rooms’ will, in fact, be privately owned apartments, or they have a financial interest in the building of the private housing, which is where the real financial return in the whole development must
potentially lie.
 
The current economic crisis is not the only reason for the slump in the luxury hotel market. These days, does anyone who is rich enough to be able to afford to holiday anywhere in the world still want to wake up and see a sea of concrete outside their hotel window – or even see a hillside doted with villas?

Mr Birkmann has talked of Almuñecar having a “wonderful climate and landscape, and not being over developed like some places,” yet this is exactly what he wants to do – develop the last bit of unspoiled land between Almuñecar and La Herradura, and hence complete the coastal ‘ribbon development’ between the two!

If this hotel goes ahead it would be built just above El Muerto beach, which is at present is popular with nudist sun bathers. What should this fact tell us? Not only is El Muerto beach secluded, with limited access by foot path only – perfect for nudists –  but it
also happens to be a charmingly situated  beach, with natural beauty, as anyone viewing it from Cotobro can see (except where the hillside above has been scarred by Bahia Fenicia’s previous attempts to build their houses).

If the hotel is built, both it and the housing development on Peñón del Lobo would be bound to have a severe impact on the beach. (won’t the wealthy hotel guests complain about seeing nudists from their window? – no doubt their complaints will soon be upheld!)

I’m not a nudist, but I am a keen walker, and over the past few years I have been walking the coastal footpath between La Herradura and Almuñecar at least a couple of times a week (or I did do so, until Mr Birkmann illegally closed the foot path recently, with a padlocked gate!). I would much rather see the nudists on the beach – and the partridges and chameleons and snakes and lizards that I often saw along the footpath on Peñón del Lobo – than see this unspoiled coastal land being urbanised and El Muerto beach itself  become effectively a private beach for a clientele of wealthy hotel guests, being flown in and out of their luxury hotel by helicopter.

At a time when visitors, rich and poor alike, are deserting Spain’s overdeveloped coastline elsewhere in droves, haven’t we learned by now to do better and preserve what unspoiled bits of the coastline we have left? If the developers and the local council had any real vision they would conserve Peñón del Lobo as a ‘green lung’ between Almuñecar and La Herradura, while setting their development back on the other side of the road that runs behind it.

Unfortunately, it is no good expecting a local Ayuntamiento to come to a wise decision about a development like this, as local councils will always be susceptible to commercial pressures, or have members with an actual financial interest in the venture under consideration. The final decision, though,  rests with the Junta de Andalucia, in Seville, and it now seems that approval for this particular project depends on it being accepted as part of the revised PGOU ‘urban-growth’ plan that has been submitted to the Junta by the newly elected Almuñecar town council.
  
I have written to the Junta de Andalucia objecting to this development, and I hope others who wish to see the Peñón del Lobo area and the ‘little gem’ of El Muerto beach both preserved will do the same.  

Yours sincerely
Mark le Claire
Punta de la Mona
La Herradura

But the 20 volunteers, organised by the provincial environmental board, not only cleaned the beach, but the surrounding footpaths and hillside, and that was just phase one.

Phase two involved kayaks with volunteers getting a guided kayak tour along the natural parks coastline.

The Parque Natural de Maro-Cerro Gordo has EU recognition as Zona Especialmente Protegida de Importancia pare el Mediterraneo (ZEPIM) as well as Zona de Especial Proteccion para las Aves (ZEPA), so it’s not just about soaking up the sun in your birthday suit, but also about enjoying an ecological jewel on our very doorstep.

There was also an information kiosk, by the way, erected on the beach to provide information on the park; its flora and fauna. Possibly not much use, pocket-sized guidebooks on a nudist beach, mind…

The only negative element during the day was the appearance of the frothy flotilla from Nerja’s inadequate sewage-treatment system, as the town doesn’t actually have a sewage treatment plant and the problem is dealt with using the time-honoured system of ‘sea burial’

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

The emergency number 112 received several calls around 13.20 to say that what looked like a dead body had been spotted floating about 20 metres out.

The local Proteccion Civil retrieved the corpse about 25 minutes later and the state of the body indicated that death by drowning had occurred a few hours earlier.

More information on the identity of the victim and the details of the tragedy are still not known.

(News: Salobrena, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

If you’re with you’re friends, the key is to drink, eat and stay awake – anybody found sleeping before dawn gets thrown into the sea!

Back in the time when young girls had to be home by 10pm or 10.30, San Juan offered a unique opportunity to party well past midnight, away from vigilant parents, either because they were home sleeping, or manning the family tent on the other side of a packed beach.

Any lad that could strum a few cords on a guitar was a god, although the chances of hearing an acoustic guitar without sitting close to it, was slim – it was also the reason why the guitarist always scored! Fellow band member, José Montalvo, owes his younger years’ ‘score card’ to Lionel Richie ballads and a predatory acoustic guitar…

Of course, not everybody lives or spends their holidays on the coast, so San Juan is celebrated all over the country; anywhere where their is somewhere to bathe, as tradition has it that he who washes his/her face at midnight on the night of San Juan will be blessed with good looks throughout the year. It is, despite its name, a pagan festival that celebrates the shortest night of the year and similar traditions take place all over Europe to mark the Summer Solstice.

In Almunecar, over the last decade, things went astray a little with San Juan becoming a 3 or 4-day camp out in a Bedouin-city like affair, complete with discotheques – it pretty much destroyed the magic of it, but the Town Hall cracked down and put it back to being a single night camp out. The throbbing electronic music still prevails, though, much to the chagrin of the hopeful acoustic guitarists – times change.

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

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Guests at the Hotel Playa Cotobro had either cancelled their bookings prior to arrival or had packed and left after the first day – the big selling point for the said hotel is precisely that beach.

Anyway, the Town Hall got onto the Department for Coasts in Madrid, asking for sand, but Madrid had replied that funds were too tight and that more important beaches around the Spanish coastline were in more need.

The solution, thought the Town Hall, was the river sand that was being dug out for a building project just around the corner – everybody happy… except some locals, that is, concerning the quality of the ‘material.’

Around midday, the IU (left-wing party) sent out a press release publicly asking the Town Hall to stop dumping ‘earth’ on Cotobro beach. The main beef of the ecological-minded opposition party is that the muddy turbulence caused in the water is causing considerable damage to the aquatic flora and fauna. It is worth pointing out, however, that when the rivers are in full spate, the same muddy turbulence is caused, year in; year out, but the seabed appears to be able to accommodate this phenomenon.

Anyway, faced with a less that generous article in the Ideal, vociferous complaints from some locals and the IU’s public announcement, the Town Hall issued their own press release, defending their actions.

The Concejal de Urbanismo, José Manuel Fernández, rejected the claim that the beach work was a botch job (chapuza). He points out that the work was put into motion at the request of the local people in the area and the material used was approved by the Costas.

The first thing that the Town Hall did, he said, was to approach the Ministry of the Environment, requesting urgent action, as July had already commenced and the summer tourist season was upon us. The Councillors said that he received a negative reply from the Ministry – they were out of cash, so the only solution was for the Town Hall to act itself.
“It’s not earth from a work site but river gravel; the same that has been used on other occasions and the same material that is brought down by the river in the natural process.”

He considered that the use of the word ‘chapuza’ was far from objective and that the words ‘urgent’ and ‘necessary’ would have been more appropriate.

Now, we at the Gazette could be mistaken, but we seem to remember that when the previous mayor, Juan Carlos Benavides, used the same ‘resources’ for such a situation, the PP, then in the opposition, were not too impressed. Perhaps we are mistaken and have faulty recall?

(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

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Since now a year, the webcam on the beach, in front of the Ultima Ola is out of order

http://webtv.feratel.com/webtv/?design=960&pg=7F98D269-5DFE-4FC9-99BF-97B5D8DA821F&cam=15015

May be your high relations among Almunecar’s administration could help to fix it.
That cam was very helpful to have a real picture of the beach and was helping me, when in the cold of Switzerland, to heat my head!

Besides, congratulation for your Gazette which I read online and pick the printed copy at my friends at the Colchoneria Zaragossa when there.

Best regards from (today) sunny Geneva.

(Reader’s Letter: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Pierre A. Gattlen

Camino Real

(News: La Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)