Your next beach trip could come with a big fine
The city is cracking down on tourists in swimsuits.
In an effort to maintain public propriety and stop beachgoers from spilling over into the rest of the city, European beach towns have passed multiple so-called “bikini bans” fining people who wear swimwear outside designated beach areas.
The largest city on the Croatian coast, Split recently followed the popular walled city of Dubrovnik in introducing a new €150 fine for tourists wandering around in swimwear. Other places with similar rules include Barcelona, Malaga and Palma de Mallorca in Spain as well as Sorrento and Venice in Italy.
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The €1,500 swimsuit fine would be Europe’s highest
Another popular resort town in Portugal’s Algarve region, Albufeira is set to introduce Europe’s steepest fine yet: up to €1,500 ($1,569 USD) for anyone not properly covered up outside the beach.
While the new public order rules proposed by the Algarve City Council and Mayor José Carlos Martins Rolo focus on everything from public drunkenness to sports equipment in public areas, the first two points focus on “remaining or moving around in” a state of full or partial nudity.
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“Remaining or moving around in a state of partial nudity, understood, for the purposes of this Code, as a person who partially exposes their body, using any type of clothing or accessory notably, swimwear: bikini, trikini, swimsuit and similar, shorts and underwear,” reads the Code as translated from Portuguese.
The proposal, which is currently in the consultation phase and is set to be ready in time for the summer beach period, does not yet specify the distance from the beach at which one is officially considered to be in the city but is written in a way to limit beach attire exclusively to the water area. The fine could be up to €1,500 for those caught in the city in swimwear and €1,800 for anyone fully naked.
Swimsuits cause damage to the ‘image of the municipality as a tourist destination’
In proposing the rules, Martins Rolo said that swimwear in the city “harm[s] public space and hygiene” as well as “cause[s] undesirable damage to the resident population and the image of the municipality as a tourist destination.”
The crackdown comes after, in the summer of 2024, a video of eight British men dancing naked in a bar on Albufeira’s party strip went viral and caused an outcry in the country. Portugal’s coast is particularly popular amid Brits seeking sun and a party scene while tourism from the U.S. has also seen a major uptick in the post-pandemic years.
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“It is urgent to establish measures that allow us to effectively deal with the adoption of abusive behavior, especially by those who seek the municipality of Albufeira as a tourist destination,” reads the proposal.
Excessive tourism has become a contenious issue in numerous European countries; anti-tourist protests have, over the last year, started periodically popping up in cities such as Barcelona, Valencia and Amsterdam.
While the main reason for the protests came down to the housing crisis exacerbated by property owners who choose the more profitable option of charging day rates to tourists instead of monthly ones to local residents, locals also regularly draw attention to issues like overcrowding and bad tourist behavior.
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