Spain's cherished beach bars face axe in environmental crackdown

Giles Tremlett in Madrid
The Guardian, Tuesday 14 April 2009

For decades they have provided paella, sangria and shade to tourists visiting Spain's beaches, but the traditional beach bar restaurants face eviction from the sand. Campaigners have denounced moves by the environment ministry to close down the thousands of chiringuito restaurants that spring up on beaches at the beginning of summer.
Some 30,000 summer jobs and a cherished tradition of eating with sand between your toes are under threat, according to the campaigners, who want the chiringuitos to be treated as part of Spain's cultural heritage.
The crackdown comes as part of the environment ministry's response to criticism that Spain's beaches are over-developed and under-protected. It has dusted off its "law of coasts", which bans building on the sand, and told the chiringuitos to move inland - on to concrete seafront walks or past the first line of asphalt.
"We have been here on the sand ever since tourism reached Malaga in the 1950s," Servando Cidoncha, who runs a bar on the Costa del Sol beach at Guadalmar, told the ABC newspaper. "If they take us inland we will stop being a chiringuito and become just another restaurant. The English and Germans come to us attracted by a sense of tradition. Moving us would destroy that."
Politicians from all parties have thrown their support behind moves to save the chiringuitos, which jointly turn over some €900m (£810m) a year.
"They are not in any way an aggression against the environment," Javier Arenas, leader of the opposition People's party in Andalucia, said. "And this is not a moment to be throwing away income and jobs."
"We socialists are not going to stop until the future of the chiringuitos is assured," said Miguel Ángel Heredia, an MP for Spain's ruling party, representing the southern Costa del Sol.
The beach bars are to ask customers to sign a petition this summer urging the ministry to rethink. "Chiringuitos have existed for centuries, far longer than we have had ministries," Norberto del Castillo, of Andalucia's association of beach businesses, said.