Cadiz, much more than beaches
Cádiz, mucho más que playas
Antonio Luna del Barco
Andalusian Environment and Water Agency
The province of Cádiz is a strong tourist destination
with a growing demand - more than 5 million tourists
visited in 2019 - linked mainly to coastal tourism.
Due to this demand, the amount of accommodation
on offer in the area has grown as well as other tou-
rist services, with their quality also increasing. So
much so, that, as reflected in the Andalusian Tourist
Situation Survey, Cadiz’s variety of beaches are the
feature best valued by visitors to the region’s coas-
tal areas.
However, this high demand for sun and beach
tourism is also placing a high amount of pressure
on the territory, with tourist resources and infras-
tructure showing increasingly clear signs of satu-
ration. The environmental impact of this mounting
pressure is measured by indicators such as land
use, disappearance of coastal habitats, water de-
mand, wastewater purification capacity and waste
management, energy consumption, motorised mo-
bility... Even with the resident population historica-
lly showing serious shortcomings in coastal areas
when it comes to the above environmental issues,
the increasingly growing number of visitors makes
26
OTWO 09 / APRIL 2020
OTWO 09 / APRIL 2020
maintaining environmental indicators unfeasible wi-
thin the limits of sustainability.
Likewise, the pressure of tourism on some coastal
areas of the province are beginning to highlight the
social impact of this high demand, such as increa-
sed difficulty to access housing, a strain on public
services, a reduction in environmental standards in
urban areas such as noise and inconvenience to nei-
ghbours, overcrowding of public spaces due to tou-
rists, or the disappearance of traditional economic
activities.
On the other hand, just like other destinations do-
minated by coastal tourism, the province of Cádiz is
highly seasonal, with demand mainly concentrated
during the summer. If during the month of August
overnight stays exceed 1.2 million, in January they
do not reach 180,000 - 7 times less than the summer
months. As a result, a large part of accommodation
infrastructure (primarily housing) remains empty or
underused for a large part of the year. This happens to
occur in just one area, on the coast, which due to its
fragility, makes maximizing efficiency and minimizing
the impact of those inhabiting the area a top priority.
27