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ARCHIVED - Illegal caravan parking in La Azohia no closer to being resolved
For more than a decade, dozens of mobile homes have settled next to La Chapineta beach
For more than a decade now, a plot of land located on the beach of La Chapineta, in La Azohía, between the restaurants León and Vistabella, just 10 metres from the sea, has become a sort of illegal parking for dozens of caravans every winter, and locals who use the beach, restaurants and surroundings are fed up.
The law in Spain states that motorhomes may not park for the night in wild areas, especially beaches. Campervans and camping vehicles are forbidden from parking within 20 metres of an urban beach and 100 metres of a rural beach, unless it’s in an official campsite.
But that doesn’t stop hundreds of campers from parking where they shouldn’t each year, as users of the beautiful Percheles beach in Mazarrón can also attest.
Motorhome and camping tourism is the fastest growing type of tourism in the Region of Murcia, and work is underway to create more campsites to accommodate this boom in caravanners visiting the area. However, the construction of new campsites and the expansion of existing sites takes time, and in the meantime many people still park illegally.
In La Azohía, the campervans and motorhomes that park illegally are normally German, British and French. Although the locals recognise that they are “peaceful” who “don’t cause problems”, there is still the issue of the litter and waste that they leave behind, most worryingly their human waste.
President of the Neighborhood Council of Isla Plana-La Azohía, Luis Lozano, explained to Spanish media that “there are those who do it well and those who do not” – not having access to the waste disposal facilities present in campsites, the illegal campers either deposit their excrement in the sewer or take them to nearby gas stations, or worse throw it “directly into the sea”.
Solutions tied up in limbo
Locals have been asking for years for this situation to be sorted out, even while they say they are not against the campers themselves: “They are people who give life to the town at a time when it is usually quiet by frequenting local businesses.”
Attempts to legalise the situation included a project from one Murcia developer to install a parking lot legally in this area, but the City Council of Cartagena denied permission on two occasions (in June and in December 2021), on the grounds that “the application was linked to a provisional parking, but the works requested did not correspond to a temporary infrastructure, as they modified the plot excessively”.
The company filed an appeal in April 2022, but at the moment the matter is still in the hands of the courts. In the meantime, the caravans continue to park there and the police pretty much have their hands tied: “The Local Police and the Guardia Civil can do nothing, since it is private land”.
In addition to the land next to the La Chapineta playa, caravans also frequently park at the mouth of the waterway there.
“The police do throw them out, but they always return soon after,” said the President of the Neighbourhood Association of La Azohía, Pepi Agüera.
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