Blue Flag for quality and safety for 13 beaches and 2 marinas in Gran Canaria

 

The Environmental and Consumer Education Association (ADEAC) presented the Blue Flags for the beaches and marinas of the Canary Islands, in an event in which the mayor of Arucas, Juan Jesús Facundo, and the president of the Cabildo of Gran Canaria participated. , Antonio Morales, and the president of ADEAC, José Palacios.

 

For Antonio Morales, these Blue Flags are “a great satisfaction that the Environmental and Consumer Education Association recognizes with 13 banners for our beaches and two blue flags for our marinas. It is a notable achievement for our island, because these internationally recognized symbols of quality and excellence in environmental management and sustainability of beaches and marinas represent support for the joint work of public administrations and private initiative.”

 

The president of the Corporation highlighted that “with 236 km of coastline, our island has large yellow sand beaches, black sand beaches and callaos in the northern area, large cliffs with narrow beaches on their slopes and rocky areas on the northern slopes. and west. On our coasts, we have more than one hundred beaches with all types of shapes and oriented to the different cardinal points of the Atlantic, which are distributed among the 14 municipalities that border the coast. To this reality, we must add the tide pools, of which there are 42 on the island, along with more than 60 vessels.”

 

And he also made reference to a singular character from the Puertillo neighborhood, in Arucas, who saved more than 300 people from drowning on the coast, "Manuel Sosa Medina, the well-known Sandokan, would be proud that today, to see that El Puertillo “renews the blue flag that has been flying there for ten years.”

 

José Palacios highlighted that this initiative saves numerous lives, with actions that improve the safety and quality of beaches and ports. This year, he stated, applications were submitted from 35 Canarian municipalities, of which 32 obtained the insignia for the 56 beaches incorporated into the index established by the ADEAC, two more than in 2022, which total 33 kilometers of Blue Flag coastline. . Added to this are 4 marinas, two of them in Gran Canaria.

 

 

During 2022, lifeguard services carried out 10.827 interventions. 1.127 simple rescues, 33 complicated rescues, 9.667 first aid interventions and this with only 150 professionals on the blue flag beaches of the Canary Islands, just under three for each beach. Of all those thousands of interventions, “only 193 people were transferred to the hospital, which represents an extraordinary saving in the mobilization of personnel and health services. In the same year, on the Canary Islands beaches, 9 people died, 4 on the sandy beaches and 5 in the water: 0,2% on average per beach and year. Beaches that have a lifeguard service represent progress in the fight against death, whether due to drowning or cardiac arrest. But there is still room for further improvement.”

 

For this reason, he cited that “the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands itself has ruled in favor of the relatives of Arturo Fontán, who denounced the lack of surveillance, information and security of a tourist beach, this aspect being recognized by the ruling. These types of sentences help Spain continue to advance in improving safety, since if there were an informative poster about the danger of the beach, it would surely be decisive for Arturo Fontán, most likely, to be alive today,” said José Palacios. .

 

The northern mayor, Juan Jesús Facundo, also highlighted that the municipality celebrates a decade with the blue distinctive on its beaches, for which he thanked the work carried out by the Department of the Environment, remembering the passage of Gustavo Viera and Benito Falcón, thanks to whose work has maintained this recognition of the quality and safety of the beaches of Arucas. Added to this is the success that Arucas is one of the three Spanish municipalities with a special mention for its environmental education campaigns.

 

The beaches that have received the distinction this year are those of Las Nieves (Agaete); Arinaga (Agüimes); El Puertillo and Los Charcones (Arucas); Gáldar sardine; The Burrero in Ingenio; El Inglés, Maspalomas, Meloneras and San Agustín (San Bartolomé de Tirajana); and those of Hoya del Pozo, Melenara and Salinetas (Telde). As for the Marinas, those in Mogán and Pasito Blanco have obtained the Blue Flag.