The ban on smoking on the beaches of Barcelona issued last year by the government of the then mayor Ada Colau became a dead letter. Many bathers continue to smoke on the city’s sandbanks, and the City Council has not yet imposed any sanctions in this regard.
The City Council vetoed cigarettes on four city beaches in the summer of 2021. This pilot test satisfied the Colau executive, who a year later extended the ban to the rest of the coast. The objective of the measure was to improve the health of bathers and preserve the environment. Smoking is very harmful and leaves a trail of cigarette butts that take decades to disappear.
So, the City Council displayed a lot of very striking informative posters, and a good handful of civic agents in charge of ordering offenders to put out their cigarettes. The municipal executive always stressed that the desire for the prohibition was never collection, that the Urban Police would only fine the offenders if they refused to give up their attitude.
The truth is that most of the users of the beaches of Barcelona do not seem to be aware. “Is smoking prohibited on the beach? I had no idea”. Many smokers finish their puffs calmly and are very surprised by the information. Maybe too much. “So I can smoke on the promenade, but not on the sand?” “And in the beach bars you can smoke?” Yes, in the beach bars smoking is allowed. “Ha ha ha… The only city where you go to the bar to smoke.” The tourists, for their part, frown when the prohibition is explained to them, they fear that they are actually making fun of them, but they immediately put out their embers and put away their butts. And people who don’t smoke, well, they shrug their shoulders. “It is a good idea. Anything that means cornering tobacco…”. In these times, many non-smokers have no problem drawing attention to who breaks this ban on public transport, for example, but not a few have not finished internalizing the smoke-free beaches either.
And anyone who spends a few afternoons on any beach in the city will see how the presence of civic agents is not as common as last year.
Municipal sources reply that “when smokers are detected, the informers act and explain the ban to them.” The Consistory foresees that the agents of the Urban Guard intervene to denounce the infraction in question in cases of repeated non-compliance. The amount of this fine is thirty euros.
“In any case, the City Council has not yet made any complaint for this concept,” continue the municipal sources. It should be remembered that the municipal objective is to inform citizens so that they respect the prohibition. So, the Consistory has already reinforced the signage that informs of the prohibition arranged in all accesses to the city’s beaches. The City Council does not make another balance of the experience.
Perhaps the Pla Endreça of the government of the new mayor, the socialist Jaume Collboni, in order to restore order in the city’s public space, has other priorities for this summer. The municipal police officers who patrol the coast of Barcelona seem these days much more concerned with tempering the constant bustle of street vendors without permission of mojitos, sarongs, umbrellas, beer cans, temporary tattoos and other products than with chasing down smokers.
