SusTravel.co.uk

Holiday accomodation and golf courses on Spanish coasts are destroying the ecosystems the country relies on for tourism, says Greenpeace in a new report. Bad planning, and its concomitant local corruption, are turning Mediterranean Spain into a continuous urban development that is polluting beaches and sea.

 "Efforts to introduce some good sense in the irrationality which has developed on the coast are scarce and quickly neutralised by large economic pressures," said the report. The current style of development could do serious damage to the country's tourism industry, around 6 percent of the economy. Pollution over the last 13 years has led the country to close 14 percent of swimming beaches.

Spain's endless property boom has run out of land in many places and created a coastal strip with hundreds of kilometres of highways connecting sprawling urban beach developments. Scandals this year in places like Marbella and Alicante have brought into focus the usual embezzlement and kick-backs of local government planning.