The Citizens’ Platform «For a town with dignity» demands the non-renewal of the private administrative concessions of the 4 spas of Santiago de la Ribera and the guarantee of free, public and free use for the whole of the citizenship.
The Mar Menor is a unique ecosystem. It is the largest saltwater lagoon in Europe and, due to its characteristics, it has hardly any tides and waves to provide sand like a normal beach. For this reason, wooden pontoons were traditionally built on stilts to encourage bathing, known locally as balnearios.
The larger ones are infrastructures on the sea, for example the Las Torres spa comprises 1,312.69 m2 in the maritime-terrestrial public domain, subject to a pre-constitutional administrative concession, given that they were granted in the 1960s, by means of a 99-year precarious concession.
These facilities are protected for their scenic value, however so far there has only been a privative use of them, restricted to a limited number of users and limited to two months a year, despite the fact that for years now the municipality has been committed to tourism and a less seasonal influx of public.
We also consider that it is a crucial question of civil rights for citizens not to perpetuate free privileges that were granted in times of dictatorship and that have been systematically denied to the neighbours to make use of these facilities and the maritime-terrestrial area occupied by them, while the communities of owners benefiting from these concessions, are overwhelmingly second homes.
The Mar Menor is an ecosystem with unique flora and fauna that has lost its natural balance.
In the last few decades, the repeated artificial sand inflows, several times a year, to compensate for the drags of the rainy episodes that do not return to the shores, due to the absence of tides and waves, are having negative consequences on the balance of the Mar Menor. Repeated drags bury life on the shores of the Mar Menor, where algae and small remains of dead flora and fauna accumulate, contributing to the accumulation of mud and silt on the shores. This, together with decades of accumulated sand, has favoured a process of silting up of the Mar Menor which has so far resulted in a loss of depth from 7m to the current 4m.
Through different episodes of green soup and massive mortality of flora and fauna the Mar Menor has shown us that it has collapsed, only if human activity gives it a break, it will be able to recover, we understand that the use of traditional seaside resorts is more sustainable.
We consider it contradictory that given the aforementioned situation of deterioration of the shores for bathing, budget allocations are being authorised for the construction of new spas around the Mar Menor, and the possibility of rescuing the spas of Santiago de la Ribera, which are currently in good condition, without any cost, simply by not renewing an expired concession, is being passed over.
For all these reasons, we of the Citizens’ Platform «For a town with dignity» » demand the free, public and free use of the spas whose concessions have expired, allowing us to alleviate the problem of repeated contributions of sand, at least in those areas where bathing can be done in the traditional way, from these spas.
We demand that the non-renewal of these concessions be speeded up, so that these privileges of private use do not continue to be maintained for years, despite the fact that these concessions expired years ago (for example the administrative concession C-445-MU of the Las Torres Community, which expired in 2018).
And finally, the Plataforma Ciudadana «Por un pueblo digno» demands that the public domain character of the maritime area comprised by the former sailing school of Los Arcos, located in front of the building of the former hospital owned by the Autonomous Community of Murcia and which currently houses the canoeing school, be respected.