Free beaches: the silent expropriation

The bathing people He is voiceless, he doesn't have a voice. Punctually, at the beginning of the summer season there is some local protest, a sign, banners, on the occasion of the publication of the increasingly discouraging data on beaches denied. In fact, every year in Italy the concessions and prices for umbrellas and sunbeds and the number of free beaches is decreasing.

Italy is a country made of coasts and beaches. We have 8 kilometers of coastline and 4.917 bathing sites: European record. But the good news ends here. The latest Legambiente survey tells us that state concessions have reached 61.426, while they were 52.619 in 2018. The sea ​​lobby with its more than 12 thousand establishments, whose concession fees are sometimes simply ridiculous.

Free beaches in Italy

With this rate of expropriation, the free sea available to bathers has been reduced to a bare minimum. This is also because the beaches not occupied by concessions must be subtracted from those where the sea is polluted, unreachable, and where inputs are quotaFor example, in Naples, along the first stretch of Via Posillipo, two establishments have occupied the beaches, and what remains is divided among bathers, with limited access, according to a municipal ordinance, to 12 people at a time. Nothing.

Municipalities with more beaches under concession

Free sea is prohibited, from Liguria to Sicily, throughout Italy. With extreme cases that coincidentally coincide with the places where the costs of umbrellas and deckchairs are higher. In Forte dei Marmi, in the province of Lucca, 93,7 percent of the beaches are under concession: there are no free ones. In Alassio, in the province of Savona, the percentage is 95 percent, but even in Ostia it exceeds 57 percent, and in the wonderful Mondello, the beach of Palermo, 66 percent of the marine area is occupied by beach resorts. Moving to the other side of the peninsula, the picture doesn't change much: in Jesolo, in the province of Venice, 66,8 percent of the beaches are under concession; in Rimini, the figure reaches 90 percent; in San Benedetto del Tronto, 87 percent.

Free beaches in different regions

How many beaches can be granted as concessions?

But how did we get to an Italy without free beaches, where two people have to shell out at least 50 euros to spend a day at the beach? The people of bathers It's a stateless community, without its own identity and representation, as in the case of beach resort owners. A category, let's be blunt, even somewhat despised by public opinion, mostly made up of patrons of paid beach resorts who feel disturbed by the presence of bathers. freeThey prefer to pay but not have contact with them. Thus, in the country of laws, rules, and regulations, a loophole has been left regarding beach concessions. We have created a legal monster to justify a social monstrosity. The law entrusts the regions with the task of establishing how many beaches can be granted under concession in a specific territory. That's all. The rest are little more than recommendations, very general things: the establishments must be interspersed with free beaches (but no one specifies the proportion), and free beaches cannot be relegated to peripheral, unhealthy, polluted, difficult-to-reach areas, close to sewer pipes. Who decides these conditions are lacking? It's a mystery. If a citizen decides that the region has favored beach resorts over beachgoers, they can only appeal to the Regional Administrative Court (TAR), at their own expense and with an absolutely uncertain outcome, given the general nature of the law and the number of loopholes it creates.

Free beaches in America

In this void the silent expropriation of the beaches free. The beach industry deserves respect; it's a sector that employs thousands of people, with a significant supply chain and related industries, and it's part of the hospitality industry, in which Italians are excellent. But no government, center-right or center-left, populist or pro-European, has ever bothered to defend the rights of beachgoers. Abandoned to their fate as a voiceless minority. Italy sea it has become a classist country, where not everyone can afford the pleasure of bathingEven in a nation like the United States, where everything revolves around the market, competition, and the law of supply and demand, public beaches are part of the national identity. They're protected, like natural oases. The average American, even the well-off or even the rich, loads up their pickup truck with an umbrella, a beach mattress, a car seat, a cooler with beers and Cokes, and heads to the beach to spend a day at the seaside in complete freedom. It's the image of a country where social mobility isn't at a standstill and equal opportunities are embraced in every form. Unlike Italy, where even beaches have become a source of social division. If you do a Google search with the keyword The most beautiful beaches in AmericaYou'll discover many of them, and in every American state where there's a beach. They're free and accessible to everyone.

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