Neus Pi, a retired teacher who is the daughter of Begur, remembers when Sa Riera cove was “the adventure playground” for the four or five children who lived in that corner of the Costa Brava in the 1950s and 1960s. From when they played building cabins among the boxes of fish catches and from when the basement of the house where he was born frequently flooded during the storms of the east. “My house was in the water”, he remembers. Something that is unthinkable today.
Tons of sand have been deposited on this Baix Empordà beach, one of the few on the Catalan coast that gains meters year after year. An unusual phenomenon and worthy of study, considering that the usual trend is that, on average, Catalan beaches lose one meter every year, according to the researcher of the Center for Advanced Studies of Blanes (CEAB), Rafael Sardinia
In 2006, the University of Girona (UdG) published a study in which it put numbers on the rate of growth of this cove and estimated the maximum advance suffered by the coastline between 1956 and 2003 at 46 meters. period, the area had practically doubled, going from 1 hectare, which occupied the coves of Sa Riera and Playa del Rei, separated by a rock known to the natives as Sa Pirolta, to 1.73 hectares of extension. A growth that accelerated especially from the end of 1977.
For many years now, it is not the sea water that floods the Neus Pi property, but the sand. “I had to build a wall up to three meters high; there was so much sand that I was worried about not being able to open the door to the basement, where we still keep fishing tools and which used to flood”, he explains.
The reasons for this continuous growth of the beach surface are to be found in Pals beach, located further north. “Sa Riera is a cul-de-sac, a sediment trap; it receives the sand that comes from the coastal dynamics of the Pals beach that does not find obstacles to deposit and it is easier for it to enter the bay of Sa Riera”, explains Sardà in an illustrative way. The UdG study, directed by Anna Crous and Josep Pintó, indicates that the rocky promontory that separates the beaches of Pals and Sa Riera “is not very pronounced”, so that “it cannot act as a barrier” for the transport of sand, which in this area of ??the coast follows a north-south direction. In addition, this coastal sector receives a lot of sediment from the Ter and Daró rivers.
The councilor for the Environment and Beaches of Begur, the geographer Jordi González, recognizes that the case of Sa Riera is anecdotal, but not unique. He explains that what is common is marine regression motivated by the construction of infrastructure such as dykes, breakwaters or ports, which push back the coastline. “Everything that is built in the coastal area is a problem because it does not allow the beach to regenerate itself”, explains González, who also points out other scientifically unproven factors that may also have contributed to the increase in sand, such as the proximity of the massif of Begur or the expansion of the Estartit marina, which may have changed the currents.
The conclusion is that Sa Riera will continue to grow unabated, unless periodically the remaining sands are used to regenerate other beaches that experience the opposite process, coastal regression.
