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 !

Thank you, I really appreciate you flagging this. We have an apartment on the Costa del Sol that we own but the pools on the complex are not being filled. We had planned to go at Easter but obviously through correspondence, we knew that the pools weren’t being filled so we changed plans and went on holiday to another country instead. We did worry though that other apartments in the complex who rent out their apartments wouldn’t be honest with their rentals as it would clearly put many (most?) families off booking.
I know there has been a lot of rain on the Costa del Sol this year but not nearly enough to fill reservoirs. It seems unlikely they will get much more before the long, hot and dry summer.

It’s nice of you to flag this up for people op

I feel for you all it must be tough

@Harassedmum123 Yeah that's the thing that's really annoyed me today chatting with the mum she didn't have a clue. I said to her has no one told you it's been like this for months ! Really hope they get some money back it's so greedy to do this to people 😔. I don't think there has been a lot about it in the British press either so if they haven't told them then it makes sense they didn't know ! I feel like it will be repeated so many times over the next few months

@EasternStandard Thank you 🥰 personally for us we are not doing too bad there are only the two of us here. We buy bottled water to drink and we only have showers don't flush the toilet unless it's a number 2 (sorry tmi) and we don't do a lot of washing. My plants are dead though unfortunately 🙈. It's so much worse for the people with children sometimes the water isn't on 7pm til 9am so they are having to get them ready for school washed teeth brushed with limited or no water etc is a nightmare 🙈

Thanks for this, alerted friends who are going, and now aware it’s impacting our holiday too in a different location.

The future…

Its updated frequently depending on rainfall. There is a drought amd water saving measures are put in. Its in a few areas of Spain and other countries.

OP is it just the Costa del Sol. How about Almeria?

Thing is, Airbnb owners and the like will be reluctant to cancel at this point and if the situation is still ongoing by summer, people will be priced out of booking elsewhere. Nightmare. If I was in this situation, I’d be tempted to try and book a hotel now (free cancellation, of course)

The OP can't answer for everywhere in Europe! She's just letting you know about the situation local to her so you can go and make your own enquiries.

@peebles32 I'm not sure about Almeria. I know it is where most of the fruit and vegetables are grown for sale across Europe though in the huge plastic greenhouses so I'm assuming that if they do have a problem preference will be given to food production first. If you can find any local ex pat groups on Facebook they will know more than me 🥰

Almeria is next to the Costa del Sol.

@welshcakes6 thank you for informing us as was considering Costa del Sol for a May time pool break.

I have been trying to move to the Costa Del Sol for nearly over a decade, but everytime it's nearly happened something externally has squashed it (last one was Liz Truss budget).

However, it might be a blessing in disguise as I know climate change is clearly impacting the area. What is your experience on the ground out there? Are the Government on top of the risks? Do people understand the implications of things like dessertification, drought, food shortages, wild fires? Do you think it might be the area becomes uninhabitable in Summer? Are people selling up and moving North? What do you think will happen? Could the whole area economically and environmentally collapse or will it adjust?

I think the issue on the Costa del Sol has far more to do with lack of investment in water collection and storage than climate change and drought.

Anyone that has regularly visited this area will know that everything is bone dry for months on end, but there was rarely a shortage of water for pools, showers and so on. I often marvelled at the abundance of water when there, considering the introduction of hose pipe bans here at the drop of a hat!

Other regions have invested in their water resources and despite a very hot and dry climate do not have similar water shortage issues. Andalucia on the other hand has a big reservoir in Istan and it is only around 60-70% full now after the Easter rains, although the run off from the rains is easing things a bit. I doubt it will last as the weather is warming up now and there is rarely any rain between May and September. Desalination plants are in the plan, but building the infrastructure will take some time.

Well done to OP for flagging this issue. It affects mostly the areas in Malaga province from what I hear from friends who live there. That extends (coastal) from around Nerja down to La Linea (Gibraltar). Maybe more but that's what I'm hearing.

The Regional council for Andalucia is to make an announcement within days about the pool situation. It could go either way I suppose.

Thanks OP, I will check for a different region.

And at the same time, swathes of British farmland is still underwater after record wet Feb & March. What a state. (Not looking to derail, but worth thinking about).

@quizzys explained it all far better than I could @Tryingtobewellbalanced
I will say the feeling here is not great nobody is happy with the water situation obviously. But more so I think the lack of housing for residents and locals. You are looking at €1200 rent for small apartments and sometimes this is more than the local wage. Houses are out of reach unless you are rich. There is a huge lack of long term rental in places. I notice in my area alone they are very expensive and snapped up immediately with maybe 4 a month coming on to the market and everyone clambering for them.
Most of the housing is either wealthy foreigners who visit for a few weeks here and there or airb&b type places. Sometimes locals can rent somewhere for a few months but the landlords want them out for the summer because they can make big money.
There are tons of new homes being built (using a lot of water to do so) but non of these will be affordable they are all holiday homes or will be airb&bs.
From the locals there is a lot of anger towards holiday makers and it's a bit misplaced because it is the government who are at fault for allowing the housing situation and Airbnb to take over. A lot of people also rely on tourism for their jobs and the more airb&b and less hotels means less jobs. It's all a bit catch 22 because the Costa del sol does need holiday makers.
There is no anger towards foreigners who come to live here work here and pay their taxes here they are welcomed. They come from many places not just the U.K. there are a lot of Scandinavians Dutch and Moroccan people too.
The infrastructure just can't cope with the influx. The water system, the electricity grid (we have lots of power cuts) the roads (no parking anywhere in the summer so if you need to go to the doctors or the bank it's a nightmare) the supermarkets (tiny and overwhelmed in the summer) it's all a bit of a mess tbh and I don't know the solution.

@Tryingtobewellbalanced I would say no on the whole people here are not as worried about climate change they are worried about having a home and being able to feed their children the rest comes secondary.
It's not in many Spanish peoples mind set especially the older generations to question the government. This was really evident in covid there was so little rule breaking here compared to what I saw in the U.K. if the government say you can't do it then you don't do it. Absolutely no one I know has broken the water rules everyone has dead plants, pools are empty etc.
But now with the protests in Tenerife I wonder if the younger generations will be the ones to start questioning.
When we had a massive downpour and a hell of a lot of it just simply ran into the sea because the drainage system is not up to coping with it. Recycling seems a lot more limited here too. Don't see many electric cars people simply can't afford them. Wildfires are a massive problem and I think that would be the thing now that would be putting me off coming here even for a holiday because god knows how they will put them out with no water and it's scary. Of course they can use sea planes but sometimes sorting that out takes hours and you need to be able to tackle the source.

Thank you for taking the time to paint the picture in answer to my many questions. You did a good iob of explaining alongside @quizzys , so don't underestimate yourself!

The wild fire and no water situation sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I will also think twice before using an airb&b in the future.

I think the verdict is it's become a victim of it's own success. Maybe this drought will help dampen down the demand on resources/infrastructure in the area and make it a better place for locals to just live. The loss of income from tourists does worry me though. It's a difficult job to manage and I don't envy the Governments job.

Thank you for the heads up on this.

We’ve just booked a week at the end of June in a villa near Mijas and now panicking about the lack of pool as it’s more than 10 km to the beach. However I phoned our travel company and they said their season started about two weeks ago and so far all their villa pools have water in although they are monitoring the situation closely and I guess things may change later in the season. They hoped that a definite decision would be made by end of April on what is happening generally.

@AlohaRose No problem sounds like it might be good news if they don't need to refill them. It's a shame companies aren't sending out an email explaining the situation though and just expecting people to find out for themselves. Mijas is lovely have a nice holiday 🥰

@welshcakes6 yes they are a good travel company usually and they said they have a whole “water team” monitoring the situation and liaising with the relevant authorities but we booked two weeks ago and they’re not so altruistic that they warned us about this beforehand! Mind you, it’ll be a very shallow pool if they’re not allowed to top it up before we get there! Relative to the problems that people face who actually live there though it would seem very curlish to be complaining about it at this point.

I can see how this is mega annoying but with climate change it’s just something we are going to see more and more of.

see also, extreme 40 degree plus heat, forest fires etc.

Hi, can I asked who you booked with please? We have booked with air bnb, and I am getting fobbed off about my concerns.

I know someone who works in the travel industry in Spain and she was warning me that even hotels are worried that they will not have working pools by summer!

And not just tourism is going to be affected, lots of farms too. Olive oil prices have gone crazy due to last years drought. This year is expected to be much, much worse.

@artfuldodgerjack oh no ! I haven't heard that 🥲 I heard that they will be able to be filled and topped up because they are businesses. At the end of the day if there is no water there is no water I suppose 😔. It will probably already put a strain on everything with the millions of extra visitors needing a shower over the summer.

@Nurse1980 are you speaking with Airbnb or directly with the owner ?