Barcelona’s dog beach at Llevant had to activate contamination alerts four times this summer, mainly due to heavy rainfall. The beach for our furry friends gets the most rigorous maintenance of any stretch along the city’s coastline, but rain still causes problems with water and sand quality.
The beach ran from 24 May to 11 September, about two and a half months. During this period, Barcelona Public Health Agency (ASPB) had to trigger phase 2 alerts on 28 July, 25 August, 1 September and 8 September. Three of these four dates coincided with intense or very intense rainfall in the city.
Rain always affects water and sand quality at the dog beach, the council admits. Precipitation stops surface sand from drying and increases bacteria concentrations like intestinal enterococci from animal faeces. Each alert phase ramps up mechanical sand screening frequency. Turning over soil to 30 centimetres depth helps expose sand layers to sunlight.
Phase 1 kicks in when enterococci exceed limits, triggering weekly mechanical treatment and warning signs for users. Meanwhile, phase 2 fires up when the same threshold is breached in three consecutive tests or two or more separate samples. This intensifies user supervision and triples mechanical cleaning until results improve.
Prevention measures focus on hand washing before eating, avoiding sand contact with mouths, not burying body parts in sand, and immediately picking up your dog’s deposits. Users can check daily results from the latest water quality analysis on a sign at the beach entrance.
ASPB runs weekly water and sand quality tests specifically to monitor faecal matter levels. When results exceed safety thresholds set by health directives, Barcelona activates its contamination contingency plan to reverse the problem and alert beachgoers.
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