Plastic Beach: Alcúdia's beach bars

The beach bars of Alcúdia are to become smaller. The Costas' authority, the guardian warriors of beaches and anything else it can lay its legislative hands on, has said that the bars must be no bigger than 150 square metres. Some are bigger. Loss of size will probably mean loss of interior seating, which shouldn't necessarily be a negative for those who prefer to sit outside. But it could still mean another loss - of earnings. A few square metres here or there. Do they really matter? Alcúdia has a lot of beach. The bars do not exactly make a difference in terms of how many people can pack themselves in on the sand.

The reduction in size of the beach bars is one change. Another is to be the look and materials. The wooden balnearios are to be replaced with those made of concrete (and glass). This, apparently, is a law, one dreamt up by the Costas.

There is something distinctly odd about this. Firstly, there is the fact that there any permanent structures on the beach at all. The beach bars have a special dispensation to be there, which didn't stop them tearing down the Café Playero, which wasn't even on the beach. Secondly, there is the visual element. Is wood not a bit more appealing than concrete? You might have thought so. You might also have thought that wooden structures appeal more to a romantic sense of what the beach should be - any beach, not just Alcúdia's. Concrete? It seems to fly in the face not only of the Costas' own remit but also of what a tourist might actually wish to encounter.

Nevertheless, there may well be a practical side to this. Wood is not the most practical material to be let anywhere near a coastline. It rots, it warps, it expands, it contracts. Damp air and salt are not friends to wood, be it for shutters, gates, doors, whatever. Increasingly, one sees wooden shutters that have been replaced with alumunium. Steel roller shutters are becoming more popular. They may not look as attractive as wood, but they are considerably more sensible and more secure, and they are also more attractive than wood that has become scarred, chipped, broken and bent.

So the replacement of the wooden beach bars with concrete ones may also be sensible. Yet the stipulation for these new bars also covers the colour. They are to be white-washed. White. White, which discolours so easily. White, which may look brilliant when it is new but soon fades and looks anything other than brilliant. Why white? Here we seem to have another example of the trend towards neutrality of colour on the landscape. Could they not be more in keeping with the beach? Sand-coloured, brown like the wooden ones, blues or yellows.

Smaller beach bars. The size may not be that important. But white concrete ones? Could be worse; could be plastic. Now there's an idea - plastic beach bars; even the Costas wouldn't sanction that. Whatever. At least, rather than white, put some colour back into the beach.


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Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.