The same thing happens year after year. Winter storms and rough seas erode the beaches and the authorities move in to replace the lost sand ready for the tourism season. The Coasts Authority has just announced this year’s scheme which involves the regeneration of 40 beaches along the Costa del Sol, ten in time for the Holy Week holiday and the remaining 30 before June 15th.

The Environment Ministry is to spend some 2.1 million euros on the scheme. The bad news is that, as in recent years, the 300,000 cubic metres of sand will not be dredged up from the bottom of the sea, but will come from river, stream and reservoir beds.

The Coasts Authority claims that this is merely “artificially moving sand that previously would have reached the beaches naturally”. However biologists point out an important difference. When the sediment reaches the sea naturally this is first beaten, sifted and cleaned by the waves before being deposited on the beaches with the help of the winds. Now this process is prevented from happening naturally by the urbanisation of the shoreline, hence the need to build up the beaches artificially.

The problem is that the Coasts Authority simply sifts the sediment to be used once, the result being the slightly muddy sand that produces clouds of black dust when you walk on it. This ends up sticking to the skin and is a constant cause for complaint from bathers and the tourism industry in general.

The authority points out that it is impossible to use sand from the sea bed this year. There are two beds from which sand could be dredged up, in Rincón de la Victoria and Calahonda, but both projects are at the public information stage and still have to be given the go ahead by the Quality Department at the Environment Ministry. What’s more the University of Malaga is opposed to sand from the Calahonda bed being used because there the sea floor is classed as a Site of Community Interest (SCI) with plans for a greater marine reserve given its high ecological value, something that is quite unusual in Malaga where marine beds have been exhausted. Nevertheless the authority says it has found other possible areas which could supply sand in the future in Nerja, Benalmádena and La Araña.