Commentary
On this page our webmaster muses on the naturist world of Vera Playa, indulges in the occasional tirade against authority and just about every other possible target and generally acts the grumpy old man - but sometimes he's right you know, and if you don't think so you can e-mail your views to him - he might even publish them, or even be persuaded to change his own views through civil and rational argument (come on now, who are we kidding?) Scroll down to access all of this page
BN "Advertorial" for La Menara I was surprised to read in a recent edition of BN, the magazine of British Naturism, an article about the urbanizacions at Vera Playa, which extolled the virtues of La Menara and damned with feint praise practically all the other urbanizacions. Could this just be because the authors of this article own letting apartments in La Menara? For the record, La Menara is one of the smaller of the dozen naturist urbanizacions at Vera Playa. All its apartment blocks are three stories high and as a result it does NOT have the spacious ambience of some of the other urbanizacions which are lower-rise and have more community green space. Because it is a small urbanizacion it has only a small outdoor swimming pool and no indoor heated swimming pool. The article, which is now on the BN website as well as in the magazine, decries the indoor pool in the Bahia de Vera urbanizacion as only partly heated and only suitable for the "most hardy" in winter. It is true that two or three years ago the Bahia de Vera indoor pool had a couple of bad winter seasons when the indoor pool was colder than it should be but previously and for the past two winters it has been very warm (this last winter it has generally been around 31°C - which is technically, I believe, actually hotter than it is allowed to be according to Spanish government regulations - this is probably because it has not only solar heating but also a heat-pump so, now the controls are correctly set and the management of the pool is correct and competent it is, in fact, a delight in winter). Visitors to La Menara in winter have no swimming option (other than the sea or unheated pool) and in summer have to make do with a small outdoor pool about the size of the indoor pools at Vera Natura, Bahia de Vera and Torrema Natura, whilst these bigger urbanizacions have huge outdoor pools - and at Natura World, though there is no indoor heated pool, there are four large outdoor pools. Lest I should be accused of being "a pot calling the kettle black" (being an owner of letting apartments at Bahia de Vera) let me say that I have tried over the six years this website has been operating to be scrupulous in not "talking up" Bahia de Vera over other urbanizacions on this website, which is intended to be about the Vera Playa naturist zone as a whole. In fact some of my fellow owners at Bahia de Vera accuse me of talking it down, with more news items, sometimes negative ones, almost inevitably as I am more aware of what is happening in the urbanizacion where I have live and have property than I am about some of the others. Thus it is disappointing to find owners in other urbanizacions writing what is little more than an advertorial for La Menara and passing it off as an objective description of the urbanizacions at Vera Playa. And more disappointing to find that British Naturism should have fallen for this and published it - possibly even paid for it? - in their magazine and on their website. You can read the BN article for youself - click here - and you can consult our pages on developments at Vera Playa and on holiday accommodation to get a balanced view of things! 18 June 2007 Footnote: Outdoor unheated pools are - for most people - only warm enough to use from about mid-April until late October. The sea is, in fact, swimmable all year round - if you swim in the sea in England in the summer then you will find the sea at Vera Playa to be quite pleasant even in December thru February and, of course, in summer it is delightful - though never actually as warm as the Bahia de Vera indoor pool in winter!
"Broken Arrows" - 40 years of cover-up rather than clean-up? The following succinct account of the Palomares "Broken Arrow" incident appears on the Greenpeace website: "17 JANUARY 1966: A collision occurred between a U.S. B-52 nuclear bomber and a KC-135 tanker aircraft while over the village of Palomares in southern Spain. The B-52 was on an airborne alert operation and carried four B-28 thermonuclear bombs. In the collision, the KC-135 exploded and caused the B-52 to break up, scattering wreckage over a 100 square mile area. One of the four nuclear bombs landed relatively intact, while the high explosives in two other bombs detonated upon impact with the ground scattering radioactive materials over the village and surrounding area. The fourth bomb fell into the sea and was recovered intact three months later after an extensive underwater search."    The recent (October 2006) announcement that the United States and Spanish governments have reached agreement on a further clean-up of contaminated land at Palomares where 3 H-bombs accidentally fell in 1966 is no great surprise and pretty certainly much overdue. Nonetheless it will undoubtedly cause concern to both residents and visitors to the area and especially to owners of property and businesses who will fear detrimental implications to property prices and levels of business may result.    The story of the so-called "Broken Arrows" incident in 1966 is already known to most people in the area and has been seen as a bit of interesting and colourful history, a tragedy for the men who lost their lives in the mid-air collision and their families and something of a farce as the full might of the USA and NATO forces spent four months searching fruitlessly for a lost H-bomb, constantly shadowed by Soviet spy-ships and submarines eager to find it first, and refusing to listen to a local fisherman who saw the bomb hit the sea and knew exactly where it had fallen (they did, apparently, eventually swallow their pride and come back to him - and it was where he said it was). It has had, to our eyes at the beginning of the 21st century, all the unreal characteristics of the cold war period known to us now mainly through films and other drama documentaries and seemingly an episode long removed from present day realities.     However, according to the American Brookings Institution website, despite costing $120m (including compensation paid to 500 Palomares residents), the original clean-up was carried out with little regard for the health and safety of Spanish workers and residents, the prime objective of the then Franco dictatorship being to play down and cover up what had happened. The news that recent monitoring of snails and other animals has revealed continuing contamination of the ground in the area with plutonium, uranium and americium has caused the governments of the two countries to agree a new programme of investigation and clean-up brings the problem into the here and now - and rightly raises concern not only because these substances are known to be some of the most toxic on the planet, but also because it suggests that there is a problem of an unknown size and extent which has been there for 40 years and meantime the area has been allowed to be intensively farmed and developed for residencial, leisure and industrial purposes.     When the Spanish government seized around 10 hectares of land in Palomares some two years ago some cynics said that this was a cheap way of the government getting hold of some valuable building land (the area being in the course of a property boom). The recent announcement is more sobering.    Back in 1966 Palomares was a tiny, dusty village surrounded by desert. Reports from the time seem to suggest that fragments of the two bombs and their plutonium and uranium whose high explosive starter/detonator mechanism exploded on impact were spread over a wide area. One can perhaps understand that given at the time most of the area was undeveloped desert, the area concentrated on by the original clean-up was the village of Palomares and its surrounding agricultural fields. It is not clear whether there was any systematic survey undertaken of the surrounding area which was then largely empty desert land. Now it is no longer empty land - there are thousands of apartments and hundreds of villas and houses and several hotels, a major golf course and businesses of all sorts in Palomares and within a 5 kms circle around the village, which, like many other coastal areas in Almeria province has experienced a property klondike in the past decade. In addition hundreds if not thousands of hectares of highly productive horticultural land supply the supermarkets of the UK and Europe with salads, vegetables and fruits year round - the area is a significant part of the horticultural production revolution which has seen Almeria province become one of the main suppliers of such foods to the whole of Europe. It would seem that people right across Europe have an interest in knowing that there is no land contaminated by plutonium or other poisonous radioactive substances which may be growing crops for human consumption and it is presently not clear that any such monitoring has taken place.     The announcement of the new investigation and clean-up seems to be cautious about the extent of the problem with the declared first task being to produce a three dimensional model of any contamination. It has not been made clear whether this investigation is to be confined to the 10 hectares of land seized by the government in Palomares or whether it is to be more wide-ranging. The Director General of the Spanish agency responsible for the new work has indicated that he does not know what the investigation may find and that the first phase could take two years or more and, significantly perhaps, nobody seems to have produced an estimate of the expected cost of the new investigation and clean-up, though it has been said that the United States will pay the majority of the cost of the initial phase.     It rather looks as if there will be no quick answers. One hopes the investigation will be wide-ranging and thorough and open - the worst thing would be for there to remain any suspicion that a cover-up was continuing on what by any reckoning could be a major public health concern. It may be that residents and property owners will have to ride out the period it takes either to give the whole area a clean bill of health or to find contaminated sites and properly to clean them up. A photo dating from the first clean-up period on the Brookings website shows some of the 1400 tons of contaminated soil which was transported back to the USA stacked on the beach apparently at Vera Playa (though it is difficult to identify the exact location it may be where the Hotel Vera Playa Club stands today - a desalination plant paid for by the Americans as part of the reparations is understood to have been built in that area and it is believed that some of its foundations were revealed after winter storms last year) awaiting transport to US ships. Inevitably one wonders how thorough and scrupulous were the decontamination techniques and practices at the time (one website claims that American personnel were issued with protective clothing, but Spanish workers were not) - what measures were taken to ensure there was no leakage from containers whilst stacked on the beach - could any part of the beach have been contaminated either by the explosion or during the transit of contaminated material? Has any monitoring been done of the beach or surrounding areas to ascertain what the position is now? Only a comprehensive and open investigation now can provide the assurance the area needs that all is well and safe.I hope that both Spanish and international environmental bodies such as Greenpeace and/or Friends of the Earth will take an interest in this matter so the rest of us can have some confidence that official statements are at least tested and measured as to their credibility.   A couple of years ago a Barcelona University study claimed that appreciably higher than normal levels of plutonium are present in shellfish caught off the coast near Palomares. The conspiracy theorists believe that this is because not one but two or even more H bombs were lost at sea but only one was recovered. The land based pollution is said to be because one (or possibly two) of the H bombs to fall to earth on the Palomares area exploded (only the detonator or starter mechanism, not the full H bomb, fortunately) and this resulted in the parts of the bomb - including the plutonium and other nasties in the starter - being distributed around the point of impact (which is now commemorated by the street being named after the date of the incident - January 17 1966). According to the American Brookings Institution, post-incident monitoring was ill-equipped and extremely limited but did show high readings in periods of high winds, suggesting the contamination was spread quite widely. 28 October 2006 More on the Palomares "Broken Arrows" incident on our history page
Are textiles wimps and naturists toughs? It's a bit difficult to believe now in late October but only about 6 weeks ago the full length of the official naturist beach at Vera Playa was thick with bodies. Naturists to the north and textiles to the south. And very few naturists prepared to "stray" into the thick of the textile occupation of the southern half of the beach. And it was on such a day that I noticed a very interesting phenomenon.... It was a day which started well, had a typically beautiful Vera Playa morning but on which, around lunch-time, the weather deteriorated somewhat, the wind got up more than usual and the sea became quite rough. In the afternoon the "textile end" of the beach was almost empty whilst the "naturist end" was still quite well frequented. So what could be the reason for this? Frankly I don't know for sure, but I subsequently observed the same phenomenon on a number of other days and conversations with others have suggested some reasons - 1. Naturists are just tougher cookies than textiles and a lttle bit of wind and rough seas won't keep them off the beach. 2. Many naturists are day visitors to the beach and have driven some way to get to it so are not easily put off. 3. Textiles are more inclined to go off and do something else in less than excellent weather - such as visit the Aquapark - whilst there are not the naturist alternatives to attract naturists. Of course there might be some other perfectly reasonable and logical reason - if you know it let me know! 26 October 2006
There's naturist community and there's naturist community... This is not the first time that I've waxed lyrical/had a bit of a rant (depending on your interpretation) on the topic of non-naturists living/staying in the allegedly all-naturist urbanizacions in the naturist zone at Vera Playa. And I guess it won't be the last either! Anyway, the fact is that most British and northern European naturists tend to think that because the naturist urbanizacions are supposed to be naturist and because their rules/regulations/statutes/norms established by democratic decision say that they are naturist communities where people are expected to live a naturist lifestyle and that owners of properties in them agree not to rent their apartments to non-naturists, a non-naturist or textile will be as rare at Vera Playa as a snowflake. Wrong! A substantial proportion of owners rent their apartments to non-naturists either short-term (for holidays) or long term (for permanent living) and many, maybe most, clearly do absolutely nothing about ensuring their tenants are naturists and, it seems, don't even bother to tell them they are living in a naturist urbanizacion. The worst offenders seem to be "investor" owners who rent their apartments to people working in the local economy (everything from building and horticultural workers to prostitutes). At the extreme are unfortunate Moroccan Muslim building workers who seem to be assigned to an apartment by their "Gangmaster" - they seem not to be told in advance that they will be living in a naturist community and, it appears, have no say in where they are allocated and, in reality, they daren't refuse despite their religious objection to nudity because if they do their Gangmaster will send them back to Morroco. How outrageous is that? Other owners seem to be renting out their apartments to people who not only are not naturists but also seem to be incapable of living in a neighbourly way - some with large dogs confined to small gardens which rapidly become muddy dog latrines contrasting rather graphically with the exquisite mediterranean gardens of their neighbours. In at least some cases the owners of such apartments appear indifferent to paying community fees, calculating no doubt that it will be many months if not years before the Community gets its act together sufficiently to get a case heard in Court or to start repossession proceedings. I would not wish to exaggerate the problem - probably only 5% or so of properties are in the categories described above, but then it is the case that each such case adversely affects the five or ten properties nearest it, so there are not a lot of properties which do not suffer the knock-on effects and consequences of this phenomenon in either a marginal or major way. I believe the naturist communities seriously need to get their acts together and tackle this problem otherwise they will be on a course of severe decline over the next few years - the logical and eventual consequence of which could mean the exit of many or most genuine naturists. Already it is clear that there are rising numbers of properties for sale in the naturist zone - this is probably mainly due to the flattening out or even decline in the Spanish housing market this year - but it is also true that some of those seeking to sell are disenchanted with the drift to non-naturist occupation and concerned that the extent of long term renting to local workers, some at least of whom occupy apartments at high density, may fundamentally change the character of the naturist urbanizacions. If my memory serves me correctly an earlier example of a naturist community in Spain had to suffer a major crisis before it got things on a better footing for the future? The reasons and circumstances were, I believe, quite different, but there may be a message and some lessons there for the new wave of naturist communities at Vera Playa to reflect upon. Any observations? If so send them to me - see homepage for contact details. 14 September 2006
Naturists won the battle - but look set to lose the war In 2002 Vera Council took on the naturist community, local, national and international, by erecting a barrier across the officially decreed naturist beach. Destruction of this barrier by militant naturists followed and in 2003 there were mass demonstrations against the Council's actions by naturists. In April 2004 naturists at Vera Playa won a famous victory when the Public Protector (Ombudsman) for Andalucia upheld their complaint that Vera Council had acted illegally in seeking to reduce the official naturist beach by nearly two kilometres. But nothing actually changed: Vera Council erected a sign at Playa de Baria 2 which says the beach there - Playa El Playazo - is "zona textil". It isn't - it is "zona naturista" but, of course, the many hundreds of owners of textile apartments fronting this beach and the thousands of visitors to it naturally believe the "official" council sign. And Vera Council has been relentless in perpetuating its view of the status of this beach by consistently telling tourists and the travel trade that the naturist beach is only 600m in length and all the beach in front of the new textile developments is textile. In doing so, of course, Vera Council is acting illegally and is ignoring the Ruling of the Ombudsman. But does Vera's Mayor or Council care about acting illegally? Of course not, it's no problem at all! Meanwhile the naturist community seems to have given up. Spanish naturists seem to have lost the plot, saying that it doesn't matter because now under the Spanish Constitution you can be naked anywhere so there's no need to fight for official naturist beaches. This misses the point entirely that this stretch of superb beach, officially designated as naturist, is becoming de facto textile due to the sheer numbers of textiles using it and 95% of naturists - certainly those from outside Spain - will not choose to use it when it is so heavily used by textiles and there are official looking signs saying it is textile - how many naturists want to have a stand-up row on the beach with textiles about the status of the beach and how many textiles are going to accept a verbal statement from a naturist that (a) the sign is wrong and is illegal and (b) the Spanish Constitution gives a right to be naked anywhere (and incidentally, does it just give this right to Spanish citizens or does it also do so to other EU citizens and people of other nationalities?). My reckoning is that by the end of Summer 2006 the sheer force of numbers of textiles will have shrunk back the de facto boundaries of the naturist beach to the 600m Vera Council has always wanted.Yesterday, construction started on a second cafe/bar on the beach in the disputed section - who gives permission to erect beach bars/cafes? Vera Council of course. And will this new bar be naturist? No chance, just as the existing bar (Antonio's) is not naturist either. The naturist community will be the poorer for the loss of this length of beach - it amounts to around 3/4 of the length of the official naturist beach - does the naturist community really want to be left with just 1/4 of what the Ombudsman has ruled it is entitled to? As one of the few naturists who make a point of walking, running and cycling the entire length of the official naturist beach, I shall be very sad to concede well over a kilometre of beach to textile use, but with illegal signs allowed to survive and no protests by the naturist community, Vera Council will have proven the old adage that it is more important to win the war than win an individual battle. What amazes me is that the Naturist Association has not even taken the modest action of posting a notice on the council's "official" sign disputing the counci's unilateral and illegal designation of the beach as "zona textil". In 2002/3 the sign itself wouldn't have survived! 17 May 2006
Another scam to watch out for - and this one can be serious! It's long been known that Alicante airport is a place where travellers can become the targets of criminals - the most recently publicised way of relieving people of their valuables is that of criminals on motorbikes or scooters. The pillion passenger relieves people waiting at bus stops or walking through the car park of their handbags or computer bags as they pass and then they are away at high speed. The victim hardly knows what has hit him or her. And so common has vehicle crime become on the Costa Blanca that most of the car rental companies there now remove radio aerials and everything else detachable, especially the rear parcel shelf - so that potential thieves can see there is nothing in the car to steal, and some car rental companies also issue written warnings to renters not to leave anything inside the car and to leave the glove box open so it can be seen to be empty. One rental company employee said that any car going out with a rear parcel shelf in place was practically certain to come back with the damage that thieves cause in smashing their way in. By comparison, until recently, Almeria airport has had a safer image in keeping with its much smaller size. I've read about the rise in crime levels in and around the airport with some scepticism as though I've used the arport on many occasions I have never seen anything to concern me. Not until yesterday that was. Leaving the airport in daylight around 7.45 pm and taking the link road to the E15 motorway we soon became aware of a small Mercedes saloon ahead of us driving erratically. Inside were two men. Almost immediately I realised there was another car behind us, also with two men in it, and approaching rapidly. As we reached the roundabout at the motorway junction the front car actually drove across the dirt between one exit from the roundabout and another and practically simultaneously the car behind shunted us. Fortunately I was alert enough to remember that the point of these tactics was to get you out of your car to inspect the damage - the men in the car which has shunted you then engage in a vigorous altercation with you to distract your attention whilst those in the other car relieve you of your luggage and other belongings - and crew no. 1 might just mug you for your cash, credit cards, passports and jewellry for good measure. And all in a matter of seconds and before you realise what has happened they will be away. So the advice is don't stop whatever you do. Make your way back to the airport, to a police station, even a garage or shop where there are people around. So this is what we did, foot hard down and away - one of the cars drew level with us (now on the motorway) and tried by gesticulations and flashing lights and horns to get us to stop but we wouldn't and didn't. Clearly there is a risk that you will get side-rammed or shunted at high speed but in this case at least the criminals lost the will to persevere and gave up. They probably left the motorway at the first exit - we didn't - but I admit to looking at every car approaching us from behind with more than usual care - and apprehension. We were lucky to come out of this incident unscathed. So be warned! It has been suggested to us since that a sensible thing to do is to very visibly use a mobile phone to call the police (112) and also to take the registration numbers of the cars involved. Another ruse such attackers use is to flash you with their headlights, sound their horn etc and gesticulate at your car as if something is wrong with it - again the objective is to get you to stop, so whatever you do, don't. We realised afterwards that our car bore the sticker of the car rental company that owns it - they usually do. It is probably a sensible thing to remove any sticker which identifies your car as being a rental one as this is just an open invitation to criminals. An anecdote: a few years ago Spain changed its car numbering system to, amongst other things, prevent rental cars being obvious (the same happened in Florida after several notorious murders of tourists in the 1990s). I am told that this has been largely negated by the rental companies putting stickers on the cars, removing hub caps (several of the rental firms at Alicante airport do this with all their cars - a sure advert that the car is a rental one) and the authorities apparently issue registration numbers to car rental companies in bulk series which are well known to criminals! Incidentally it is not long ago that an account was published of how the E15 motorway is the main route for drug traffickers ferrying hard drugs smuggled into southern Spain up into France and then subsequently to other countries such as the UK. The article described how the gangs travel in extended convoys of six or more high performance cars with most of the vehicles being decoy and communications cars. The trips are said to take place several times each week, usually at night, and at such speeds that the police cannot keep up and even police helicopters have difficulty in tracking the vehicles and, in particular identifying which one actually has the drugs cargo - the decoy cars are placed and moved so that if the police do manage to stop one of them it will generally be one of the decoys. 5 & 15 May 2006
The downside of mass development No doubt some people will be critical of me for painting Vera Playa in a negative light in the account above. My response is that good though VP is, it isn't perfect and that with the mass development of this part of Spain, the negatives have increased - crime being one of them - traffic levels another. Of course there have been some positives as well - more shops, restaurants and other facilities. But at almost every level, from the environmental sustainability of large scale development in a desert area without the water resources to support it, to the desire of local councils to almost entirely urbanise their areas (Vera Council wants to build on 90% of its considerable area - the Andalucian government has told it to be less ambitious and settle for 60% - and this in an area which is currently probably not more than 5 - 10% urbanised). The approved plans of local councils will result in the Levante area of Almeria province having a population as large as that of Madrid by 2020. You've heard of the "snowbirds" moving south to Florida and southern California - this is Europe's equivalent and amounts to a mass migration of people from the colder areas both of Spain and northern Europe. Even the local water company has said it cannot supply the existing levels of development (and water cuts are now being imposed throughout the year) let alone the planned levels of development and has said that all building in the region should be stopped (it hasn't). The environmental and ecological groups opposed to the urbanisation of Almeria province point to the complete lack of planning or provision of infrastructure to support such massive levels of development and indeed of the basic unsustainability of mass development in an area where without water for drinking and irrigation (barely a blade of grass would grow without artificial watering in this basically desert area) and electricity for heating in winter ( deserts can be cold as well as hot!) and for air conditioning in summer, such development would be impossible to live in. At the micro level, the character of the naturist beach and residential zoneat Vera Playa has already changed out of all recognition over the past 10 years- for good and bad - for those who rather like the image of Vera Playa as an oasis on an otherwise deserted - and desert - coastline, it is undoubtedly mainly for the bad. And the mass of textile development surrounding the naturist zone and now coming to completion will put massive pressure on the beach in summer starting this year. Many of the new textile apartment complexes with many thousands of properties in total are not yet finished. But some are and the new textile hotel fronting the southern end of the naturist beach (still, wrongly and illegally, signed as "textile" by Vera Council) is now open and textiles are spilling out of it in large numbers to use the beach, no doubt totally unaware of it being an official naturist beach. And it will take brave naturists to be such at this end of the beach in future. I give very little chance indeed of the southern kilometre of naturist beach being de facto naturist this summer, let alone next. Again, at the micro level, probably the most significant development affecting the naturist zone is what seems to be an inexorable drift towards textile ownership and occupation of properties. Maybe it is the case that there just aren't enough naturists to go round, or that the demand for housing is so great that textiles have to look within the naturist urbanizacions to rent or buy, but whatever the reason the fact is that the drift to textile is well under way. Crime and in particular burglaries of apartments in the high season has become a fact of life over the past few years. This year there have been spates of burglaries even in the low season. Some urbanizacions seem to be more vulnerable than others, with Torrema Natura and Vera Natura appearing to top the list, but my guess is that Natsun with its lack of any fenced perimeter probably still tops the list in reality. Even Bahia de Vera, which has had relatively few burglaries in the past, now appears to be suffering more - despite the elaborate computer controlled key system it is still all too easy for criminals just to walk through the main gate - and especially so when the main pedestrian gate is left open - as it was today. If you come on holiday to - or to live at - Vera Playa you will not find the place as it was 10 or even 5 years ago. But you'll still have a super time and you are most unlikely to see or be a victim of any crime - especially if you are sensible and keep your wits about you. Vera Playa is still a naturist paradise and remember that nowhere is immune to these sorts of pressures and probems, not even naturist paradises. 5 May 2006

If you wish to comment on this page please see contact details on our homepage   Home | Top of this page