The reason for this budding optimism is because a commission has been formed, comprising of establishment owners, ecologists, workers unions and the Junta de Andalucia, to come up with the basis that would allow them to remain on the provinces beach… at least for some years to come.

The First Minister for the Andaluz Parliament (Junta), Jose Griñan, made the announcement on the 17th, pointing out that a solid judicial basis was needed which would ‘give fruit to a strategic alliance’ between ecologist concerns and the Spanish-Mediterranean institution of the chiringuito.

And that’s the trouble you see: the chiringuito has really morphed or mutated out of its original format, which was a provisional, seasonal construction, into a permanent restaurant construction occupying beach space. Torrenueva, at the beginning of the 80′s, was a good example of the temporary beach bars – on the 1st of September, the one down the eastern end of the beach, literally disappeared until the next season.

However, the chiringuito has become an essential component of Andaluz beaches; to get rid of them would be to shed part of the essence of our beaches. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to make an analogy between our chiringuitos and Parisian, boulevard, cafe terraces.

Beaches and river courses are public domain in Spain; technically there are no private beaches, so private businesses permanently occupying parts of beaches is a legal problem. This is why chiringuitos that are physically sitting in the middle of a beach are being demolished and moved back to become part of the seaside promenades (paseos).

Los Herradureños will remember that back in the late 80′s the old chiringuitos were demolished and the lucky ones were allowed to rebuild next to the paseo/beach roads.

Anyway, back to the new commission, the provincial delegate for Granada is compiling an exhaustive report on the specifications of the Costa Tropical’s chiringuitos, which will be forwarded to the commission, so that by the end of the year this commission will be able to reach a conclusion…

In the meantime the majority of the 52 chiringuitos on the Costa Tropical have licences that are on the point of expiring…

(News: Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

They come together to discuss their business, cry in each other’s beers, and to wonder if the new concessions, now controlled by the Junta, will ever come to pass. The Federal Government previously held the reins and was quite hard on these beach bars, seeing them as a plague or a contaminant instead of as viable businesses doing what beach bars should be doing.

In effect, they wanted to eliminate them altogether by moving them off the beaches (“we will never surrender,” they were heard to mutter) but the troops rallied and managed to stave off an early execution probably because someone up high realised how imbecilic was the idea to kill off these establishments.

Anyway, they like to celebrate and honour their own, and so chose Rafael Garciolo as Chiringuito Man of the Year. Raff’s 74, owns La Gaviota en La Herradura, and has always supported the Association.

For several years now, the government has been trying to improve the condition of its coastline; that is, to avoid further exploitation which for decades has ruined much of the coast. Thus, the chiringuitos have been targeted but policy has never been fully carried out, as these establishments are extremely popular.

Anyway, from January 1st, control of them is supposed to pass from the Central Government to the Regional Government, which in the case of Andalucía means they will call the shots, but many still doubt this will actually come to pass.

Beef number one from critics and law-makers is that they should not be located on the beach. Some of them are temporary structures, so moving them is little problem, but many are permanent structures, so moving them is much more of an issue. But why move them at all?

As long as they follow basic rules, they serve the public well and do no harm, and generate jobs and local income. And it’s not as if you can’t see the beach or sea for the chiringuitos, unlike the plethora of ugly housing and hotels that have contributed to the decline of the West, er; I mean coast.

Eyewitnesses claim that they saw two youths, around two in the morning, squirt inflammable liquid onto a small store shed belonging to the Chiringuito La Barca, in which it stored beach equipment, before setting light to it. The same eyewitness claimed that the flames were so fierce that they were nearly as high as the nearby palm trees.

Deliberate fire vandalism or arson appears to be a growing threat for beach bars, starting when a chiringuito in Motril was burnt to the ground and, more recently, a flotilla of hydro-pedaloes were incinerated on Playa San Cristóbal.