Hotel Painting Action against Coastal Development in Spain

An angry security guard expresses her dismay as Greenpeace activists paint the façade of a 20-storey hotel being built on the El Algarrobico beach. They spell the word ILLEGAL which covers the breadth of the hotel front. The hotel is a symbol of the uncontrolled urban development and destruction of the Mediterranean coast. The company owner of the hotel, Azata del Sol continues the construction works despite a sentence issued in February 2006 by a local court to stop the building of the hotel. A Greenpeace report (Destruction at all cost) has highlighted the impacts of unsustainable and uncontrolled urban development along the Spanish coast: over two million new houses are projected to be built in the next few years, along with a large rise in the number of large residential developments with golf courses and marinas, often in areas where the environment is under severe pressure due to climate change. Nearly 100,000 illegally-built houses have been built and 85 corruption cases linked to urban development have already been investigated by the authorities to date.