Have you booked a holiday to Costa Del Sol this year PLEASE READ !

[welshcakes6]

Have you booked a holiday to the Costa del Sol this year in either private rental appartments or airb&b or booking.com etc ? There is a huge water shortage here and pools will not be opened in residential complexes only in hotels and designated holiday apartments. I have noticed that many of the agents or owners are not giving this information out to people. Families are arriving expecting to be able to use the pool and are not able to. On top of this the beach showers and toilets are also out of use making that not a great option either.
I would suggest you check with who you are renting from to see if this is the case. They are using the excuse that the decision has not yet been made. I have just spoken to a very upset family who have arrived with the intention of using the pool most days.
There are also water restrictions and the water is turned off in some residential properties overnight meaning people are filling buckets to flush the toilets.
Please if you have spent a significant amount of money check that you will have access to the pool !

andalucia.com/living/water-restrictions-on-costa-del-sol

I was there over the weekend and saw lots of empty pools. Locals said the torrential rain the week before had helped refill the reservoirs which was much needed! Good to flag this for people with a villa booked.

All those golf courses. They finally drained the aquifers I suppose. Spanish farmers complained about this for years.

Apparently the golf courses have their own water system filtration thingy 🤷🏻‍♀️ tbh I don't know how this works but yeah it's annoying that the golf courses are still thriving and the water is cut off when you need to brush your teeth !

The rain over the Easter weekend I think filled the reservoirs up to about 30% so they are still very low and no rain forecast at the moment

We live in a residential apartment building of about 200 apartments I would say at least 80% airb&b type places and we have been informed that the pool won't be opening this year

Is it just Andalucia? Have an expensive villa booked for Tenerife for July so I'm very worried reading this!

I'm not sure about Tenerife tbh I haven't heard anything about there. Some places have desalination plants where they take water from the sea so will be fine. I have mainly heard about the Costa del Sol area.
Sorry if it has worried you but it's always good to be prepared and I would think you should get a fully refund because it's not as advertised. Hopefully Tenerife is fine and you have a nice holiday 🥰

There are other things happening in Tenerife at the moment mainly to do with over tourism local residential properties being used for short term holiday lets and serious lack of housing for residents. In the past most people would go to a hotel or a designated holiday complex self catering but more and more is now airb&b.
There has been news of local people living in caves and protesting with hunger strikes. I don't know how much of this is true

@welshcakes6 thank you

It all comes from the same aquifers and reservoirs. Same problem in parts of Oz. Farmers in despair and when they come into the cities they see lawn sprinklers going all day. There's always the sea I guess!

And so it begins. Unfortunately it was just a matter of time. The golf courses should be shut down, it's not about filtration they use too much water in an area to maintain grasses that would not be there naturally that can no longer sustain it. We can't live the way we are used to any more, and change is hard but the time for small actions has unfortunately passed now.

Desalination plants aren't without their problems either unfortunately. They produce hypersaline hot waste water which gets put back in the ocean and kills everything around. There are tough decisions ahead.

There's plenty of water in the sea for swimming. Agriculture is crying out for any water available. Tourism is a huge thing in Andalucia but there was a lack of investment in water infrastructure for many years. Murcia and Valentia regions have no issues as desalination investment years ago ensured adequate supplies.

Andalucia and the CdS especially has been known for dodgy city hall decisions etc. over the years. It has come back to bite them now.

I was in Tenerife early March and they are in very similar drought conditions, no restrictions at that point in the South (some people we spoke to said there were restrictions in the North already) but they were definitely on the horizon it seemed.

Plus it’s very expensive to set up from scratch.

I gather from a friend with a place in Majorca that it’s similar there - huge local protests about so many properties - prices have soared there anyway - being given over to airbnbs. Locals (as in so many touristy places) are increasingly priced out of housing in their own areas.

The golf courses will be the last to be told not to use water it's big big business and a big tax revenue for the government.

Hi, thanks for this.

We’ve got a villa booked for August via Air bnb. The host has said that the pool is already full.

Thanks for flagging this up. Sorry if this is a daft question, but is this likely to be the case in other European countries too?
Sicily in July ...

My sister lives in Andalucía and thankfully kept her pool full over winter with a cover and regular tending by the pool guy so not having any problems in that regard but is aware of nearby neighbourhoods who are having their water shut off overnight etc. It’s a real issue.

What? Where do you think the golf courses get their water from - outer space?

Is there any word re restrictions on the Costa Brava? I was in Girona in early March. We had torrential rain one of the days I was there and the hotel staff were delighted as they said they had had very little rain and there had been talk of water restrictions. Hopefully rainfall has improved but if they were worried in spring I would be very concerned about summer.

But the level will go down over the summer. They're not allowed to fill
up atm.

The level will have gone down by then. If it gets too low the filters won't work. They aren't allowed to top up atm.