Rain of Blue Flags for the Spanish beaches for another year. 627 beaches, 97 marinas and five tourist boats will wave this blue badge this year, which means that these spaces meet sufficient water quality, conservation or accessibility standards. Or at least at the level required by the Association for Environmental and Consumer Education, the independent body of the Ministry, which since the mid-1980s has delivered this badge that could be something like the ‘Michelin Stars’ for sandbanks in Europe. .
And it is that the communities boast of the Blue Flags of their beaches as a tourist attraction of the first order. There are fifty countries that recognize this accreditation for their beaches or marinas, Spain is the leader in these badges since 1994 and accumulates 15% of the total blue flags of all countries. But, for a decade now, the flag search engine has left a wide area of the coast of the Peninsula blank, which is none other than Gipuzkoa.
Our territory continues to be the only one that does not have any Blue Flag for another year. The coastal municipalities (Mutriku, Deba, Zumaia, Zarautz, Orio, Donostia and Hondarribia) of the territory resigned en masse in 2009 to present their beaches to this sieve, from which the San Sebastián council already fled in 2003, for which reason It’s been two decades without this rag hoisted on the shell, Zuriola u Heritage.
A decision that, in principle, has not affected in any way the quality of these sandbanks or the arrival of more or less visitors. In fact, beaches like San Sebastian the shell o back, in Zumaia, are always on the list of those preferred by visitors on the recommendation websites par excellence such as Tripadvisor. And it is that the municipalities of the territory decided not to request these coveted flags because they required too many procedures and because the entity that manages them did not value aspects such as improvement or worsening of the sandbank or the management that is done of it.
In other words, the consistories estimated that the study that was carried out to obtain the badge was not as strict as those claimed by other certificates such as the Emas (Eco-management and Audit System) or the ISO, which are more rigorous and require more visits from the analysts. They understand, broadly speaking, that the quality of a beach is not only reflected by the good state of the water, the sand and its accessibility.
One in Bizkaia, three in Álava
For those who do not know this context, it would be shocking to see that Bizkaia also only has one Blue Flag beach (Bakio), and Álava has three interior spaces with this distinctive -Landa, Moskurio and Salurriaga-. This being the case, it is clear that for the Basque Country this emblem has lost its appeal.
Not so for the rest of the Spanish communities, which fight to be the one that accumulates the most badges year after year. The Valencian Community continues to lead the number of ‘Blue Flags’ in Spain, with 153, followed by Andalusia, with 148; Galicia, with 125 badges; and Catalonia, with 120.
The rest of the communities according to the number of ‘Blue Flags’ awarded are: Canarias (60), Baleares (42), Murcia (34), Asturias (15), Cantabria (11), Extremadura (10), País Vasco (4) , Melilla (4), Ceuta (2) and Madrid (1). It should be noted that, for the first time, a ‘Blue Flag’ will be waved in the province of Cáceres.
The most significant increase in the number of ‘Blue Flags’ has been in Andalusia and Catalonia, with three more each compared to last year.
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