Beaches

Barcelona is a Mediterranean city, a city whose history has always been linked to the sea. One of the recent transformations undergone by Barcelona in its recent history is, without doubt, the recovery of its sea front, a process culminated by two great projects: the Delta Plan and Forum 2004.

The beaches of Barcelona are located in the following areas:

• La Barceloneta: Sant Sebastià and Barceloneta beaches
• La Vila Olímpica (Olympic Village): Nova Icària and Bogatell beaches
• El Poblenou: Mar Bella and Nova Mar Bella beaches

Map of Barcelona's beaches

A space for leisure

More than 7.5 million people visited the beaches of Barcelona in 1999, making this the most popular leisure space in the city. Of course, most visits are made in the summer months, but few months register fewer than 200,000 users. More and more people come to the beaches, both in summer and in winter, enjoying the sensation of having fresh air, sun and water close to home.

Many visitors to the beaches are attracted to them by the wide range of activities on offer. All sorts of sports facilities are available for both free public participation and organised competitions. There are also environmental education activities allowing people to learn more about this environment and its relations with the city and teaching them to respect it. Other activities of a more purely leisure type are also organised, such as sand castle building competitions. In short, activities for all, throughout the year.

Water quality

Since the early-1980s, Barcelona has had a programme for the control of the quality of its beaches, with weekly evaluation of three factors:

• The microbiological quality of the water and the sand
• The aspect of the water (transparency, floating solids, oil, smell, foam, tar and presence of algae).
• The sand aspect sand (presence of waste generated by bathers and from the sea, state of litter bins, containers and accesses to the beach).

The quality of the environment and facilities of Barcelona's beaches has been, year after year, by the European Union, which regularly awards them the blue flags . This means, amongst other things, that the beaches guarantee clean water, sand cleaning, beachwatch and life-guard services, easy access, sources of drinking water and toilets, not to mention good signposting and environmental education activities.

In 1.999 the Catalan Agency of the Water of the Generalitat de Catalunya has granted Diploma of Quality to beaches of the Bogatell and the Mar Bella.

During the bathing season, data on the sanitary standards of the beaches are provided weekly. You can see the data following this link.

Safety, cleanliness and maintenance

Each season, Barcelona City Council establishes agreements with the Red Cross in order to ensure vigilance and safety on the beaches. Lookout chairs are installed near the water, and lifeboats, megaphone service and qualified personnel are all placed at the service of users. These provisions are complemented by the surveillance of the Civil Guard and fire services.

The beaches are cleaned each day during the bathing season, first thing in the morning, in the afternoon and at night. The sand of 30 hectares of beach are raked, 50,000 litres of waste is removed and rubbish floating on the water disposed of.

The "pelican boat" patrols each day, picking up floating waste from the water's surface