Lately, as a photojournalist, I have been covering the conflict in the Middle East, and that has allowed me to experience indescribable sensations and experiences —many bitter—, but also to live the daily life of societies not so different from ours, or maybe they are. The truth is that depending on the moment I think one thing and the other at the same time. I get lost.
Of course, I am not going to write here a last-minute chronicle about the invasion that Israel is carrying out in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon, nor the massacres it practices daily in Palestinian and Lebanese territory, for that there are already fellow editors, some of whom do it with great rigor and of whom I cannot have a better opinion.
The daily life that does not appear in the "last minute" is also very interesting, and it always helps me learn.
Lebanon is a fascinating country, and I am not here to criticize it, far from it, it has enough to move forward after a savage civil war that plunged it into misgovernment and resist its southern neighbor, which constantly suffocates it.
I am simply here to tell something about my day-to-day life there that made me reflect on the right we have to enjoy or not our natural spaces.
We went to Beirut two months ago, as the attack that Israel ended up carrying out weeks later in Lebanon seemed imminent. Those previous weeks helped us to get to know the country a little, learn from the Spanish colleagues who live there and be able to chat with the local people we met.
One morning, Joan and Andrea warned us that they were on a beach north of Beirut that was cheap, yes, cheap, a beach... That we should go there, that the day was great; they sent us the location.
After a 45-minute drive we arrived. A parking lot that seems private, —oh yes, that's where you pay... five dollars, door and little ladder— there I see them. Logically, I asked them about the "cheap" —or not— beaches of Beirut.
Joan explained to me that all of them are paid except for a small and dirty one behind the southern suburbs that the Zionist army is now bombing. The payments are usually 20 or 30 dollars and up. This one, in comparison, was quite cheap because it was far from the city center and also had no sand, it was pebbles. They told me that the beaches there were conceived as private clubs, and apparently, the way to establish that this beach is mine and that I trade with it had been quite mafia-like. They put up a fence, a booth with some precarious worker who charges you to enter and that's it. There, the heat and humidity are brutal, so having to pay to take a refreshing dip, that's something...
I imagined, then, paying to go to Famara, of course, how much is Famara worth, 100 or 1,000 euros? At that moment it seemed something super far from our reality, but... Is it really?
A fact: in the Canary Islands we lose four kilometers of coastline per year, in whose hands? In the Spanish State, and in the Canary Islands, there are many examples of covert privatizations of beaches —or not so covert—: Balinese beds and sunbeds with club music in the background, paid parking lots that are full at 9:30 am, races of retirees on "hotel beaches" to place the umbrella as close as possible to the tide, "eco-resorts" for wealthy classes that practically isolate beaches, etc.
Or directly, allocate kilometers of south coast to build artificial towns and cities, who walking through Puerto del Carmen or Playa Blanca has not felt that those beaches belonged to that hotel and not to everyone?
Perhaps, all this is not as obvious as having to pay 40 euros in a booth for them to open a fence and access a beach club, but it does expel you from areas, which you give up.
Those beaches are no longer ours.
In a few years, we have accepted in a certain way that this is normal, why are we not going to accept in a few others that we have to pay to visit the unique and spectacular beach of Montaña Amarilla?
Of course, then there is the debate of regulating access to natural areas, applying a payment for their maintenance and conservation or controlling the influx of visitors... Which a priori, sounds logical, but it is so dangerous... Seeing who governs us today gives me panic that debate, I imagine Clavijo, Kiessling and Marichal saying: "How?, hold my drink that I'll fix that for you."
I remember an experience of Carmen, a colleague from Drago, in the Masca ravine. She said that the intervention in that natural space had turned it into an absurd tourist attraction that distanced the ravine from being a ravine and the natural space from being a natural space. Previous payment, of course.
Until now, we have the feeling that today and tomorrow we will be able to enjoy our beaches. How many rights that we assume are ours, are becoming more complicated or have we directly ended up giving up on them?.
Here, many of us fight so that our beaches remain ours, from Pedro Barba to Verodal, and whoever wants to join knows where we are.
There, let's hope that the bombings stop and the Palestinians from the Burj El Barajneh refugee camp and the Lebanese from the Dahieh neighborhood, among others, can survive, in case they want to take a bath on the beaches of Beirut. Inshallah.
