Sagunto ends summer with no beach drownings and 3,612 police services
Sagunto's Beach Police unit closed the summer season with no drownings on its coastline and 3,612 services provided, while fines for beach bylaw violations dropped 35%.
Zero. That is the figure the City Council most wanted to highlight in its end-of-summer report on Sagunto's beaches: not a single drowning anywhere along the municipal coastline, in a summer when, nationally, Spain's Royal Federation of Lifesaving and Rescue recorded 389 deaths in bodies of water through August. Behind that number sits a Beach Police unit that logged 3,612 services between June and September, a workload almost identical to last summer's (3,634 in 2025), split fairly evenly between the beaches north of town -Almardà, Corinto and Malvarrosa, with 1,825 call-outs- and Puerto de Sagunto beach, with 1,785.
What stands out most is that fines fell even though the beaches were busier this year: just 43 penalties for breaching the beach bylaw, down 35% on last year. The force puts that down to favouring warnings over fines, backed by 106 foot patrols that beachgoers themselves rate highly for bringing officers closer before a formal report becomes necessary. When fines were issued, the most common reason was ignoring the red flag (20 cases), followed by dogs off the leash or of potentially dangerous breeds (12); fishing, camping, parking on the dunes and loud music together account for barely 11 more.
Beyond the fines, the day-to-day work shows up in less eye-catching but equally telling numbers: twenty assists to swimmers alongside the Lifesaving and Rescue Service, six people -both minors and elderly- found after going missing, and 134 warnings to anglers fishing where they should not have been. Add to that 162 animal-related interventions, 164 involving unlicensed street vendors, and 384 cases handled directly at the beach control post.
Coastal traffic also kept officers busy: 849 infractions corrected and 138 interventions for illegal camping. Responding to resident complaints about speeding near Almardà, Corinto and Malvarrosa, ten speed checkpoints were set up, screening 5,224 vehicles, one in seven of them over the limit. On public order, arrests fell to 4 -four fewer than the previous summer- and pickpocketing incidents stayed at just 2, though infractions for drinking or drug use on the beach did rise, to 19, half again more than in 2025; officers also intercepted drifting packages containing around 2.2 kilograms of cocaine on two separate occasions, handing them over to the relevant state agency.
The operation went beyond routine duties too: there were dedicated deployments for standout dates on the summer calendar, from the late-June Saint John's Eve celebrations to the solar eclipse that drew crowds to the sand and the traditional Cucañas Marítimas (greasy-pole contests over water), backed by drone support and an advanced command post. Meanwhile, the service's social media channels -the fastest way to check the flag colour or the weather forecast- reached over 1.4 million people across the season.
The report also comes in a summer when Sagunto's beaches kept their environmental quality distinction, with Blue Flags flying over several stretches of the municipal coastline, a recognition that requires meeting safety, accessibility and service standards that go beyond police patrols and include coordinated work by lifeguards, cleaning services and health-emergency protocols. Keeping that distinction requires joint work between the Local Police, the Lifesaving and Rescue Service and the Beaches Department, which reviews the whole operation every year ahead of the following season based on data gathered from the summer report.
The City Council has said some of the improvements identified this summer, such as better signage in the busiest areas, will already be applied ahead of the 2027 bathing season.
That track record has earned Sagunto's Beach Police an invitation to Huelva, host city this year for the III International Blue Flag Congress, where the unit will present its working model as a national benchmark, alongside Blue Flag Spain, ADEAC and GIAPS -organisations it regularly works with on training and guidance. Local Police councillor María José Carrera highlighted the preventive work carried out during the hottest spells, arguing that Sagunto's coastline now ranks among the safest stretches in the country. According to Sagunto City Council.