Barcelona wants to have smoke-free beaches. And this will be the first summer that the city authorities will take concrete steps to ban smoking in sandy areas.
The Barcelona City Council announced on Friday that from July smoking will be prohibited on all its beaches. In fact, the ban is the extension of a pilot test that the city carried out with favourable results on four of its ten beaches in 2021.
The Councilor for Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition of Barcelona, Eloi Badia, explained that on the beaches where the ban was applied, the amount of cigarette butts and remains in the sand was significantly reduced.
Cigarette butts are, according to him, an environmental problem because once they are thrown away they take about ten years to disappear. He also highlighted the health benefits of the ban, as well as the protection it provides for people who would otherwise become passive smokers.
Barcelona City Council will promote an information campaign, which will begin in April and end in June, to publicize the measure along the 5 km of Barcelona's coastline.
The bathing season
The measure still has to be approved in plenary session of the city council. After approval, it will be promoted in two phases: a first stage from April to June, in which the information campaign will be carried out to publicize the ban. The second phase will be from July, when it will come into force.
According to the municipal calendar, the average bathing season runs from April 9 to 18, every weekend in April and May, and from September 12 to 25.
The peak tourist season will start on May 28 and end on September 11.
