Residents of Marina del Este claim Almuñécar’s beach-cleaning boats ‘do not remove’ waste from the sea

The boats which, according to the town hall, are new acquisitions, are fitted with two hydraulic baskets, each two metres in length, capable of sweeping a four-metre-wide area.

As a safety measure, the engines are inboard and fitted with jet-propulsion nozzles rather than propellers, which minimises any risk in the event of contact with swimmers. Furthermore, to track their whereabouts, they are monitored in real time, making it possible to determine their exact location.

“A few years ago, the town hall introduced a coastal clean-up service using these little boats and to my surprise, they don’t actually clean; they’re not effective,” explains Pepe Vega, who has owned a property in Marina del Este – where the boats are moored – for three years.

Pepe has known the area for many years. Like so many other local residents, every summer he enjoys Cala de los Ermitaños, or ‘Calita del Puerto’, a small beach right next to Marina del Este. As a true lover of the sea, he complains that these boats are "a joke" because, in his view, "the most important sign that a cleanup has taken place is that you can actually see the rubbish that’s been collected. Here, you never see anything, yet there’s rubbish everywhere".

Not satisfied with what he could see from the shore, Pepe decided to investigate for himself at other nearby beaches. His conclusion is that the pattern is the same throughout the area: neither in Almuñécar, nor in La Herradura, nor anywhere else has he ever seen these vessels unload onto the shore the waste they supposedly collect from the sea.

His hypothesis is that the small amount that does end up in the nets, when they are actually used, is simply thrown back into the water for convenience, since, as he explains, "they don’t even always set their nets when they go out".

This service, which has been in operation since 2019, is scheduled to run every day between 11am and 5pm. According to the service regulations, the vessels are supposed to operate for six hours a day. However, local residents claim that there are days when, at 1pm, the boat has not yet set sail and by 3pm it is already back in port.

There are also days when it simply does not go out at all, "whether the sea is calm or rough", or when the vessel "is out of order’" Furthermore, local residents complain that there is no supervision whatsoever of the crew members working on the vessels to check whether or not they go out.

Now the residents themselves have voluntarily taken on the task of keeping the beach clean. “We’ve been collecting any rubbish from the water for years; we like to keep the beach clean,” says Vega, a keen diver. He describes how, while paddle surfing, he collects any plastic he finds floating and brings it back to the shore to put it in the bin. Like him, another local resident, who prefers not to give his name, says he has been collecting all the rubbish he comes across for 20 years.

Local residents are calling for the boats to be monitored and for them to fulfil their duty to operate every day, so that this is no longer a ‘waste’ of public money: “It’s a waste of money and, in fact, even worse than that, because on top of everything else, it’s a boat just circling round, polluting the environment and serving no purpose,” they complain.

The residents’ complaint is not just about the cleanliness of the water. They also criticise the state of neglect throughout the Punta de la Mona area: a lack of clearing, broken pavements, road surfaces in poor condition and an access road that they have long been calling for to be repaired.

The beaches department at Almuñécar town hall has said that the boats operate daily and that they have only been unable to go out on four days due to adverse weather conditions.