ABSTRACT
Spain has an extensive and varied coastline, bordering both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The Spanish coastal area has played an increasing role as a strategic economic asset given its attractiveness to tourists, foreign investors, maritime trade (ports), and the energy industry. So long as it remained unchecked, development of coastal land was extensive, and harmful to the coastal environment. Since the Spanish economic boom of the late 1960s, the country's coastal zone laws and regulations have been highly ambitious and, at the same time, highly controversial. In 1988, the Spanish government adopted a set of environmentally sensitive rules about public land ownership and setback of development – so ambitious that thousands of homes and hotel rooms located on previously privately owned and unencumbered land found themselves on public land or in the setback zone. This chapter recounts the national and international legal and political battles surrounding this and related issues of coastal law and policy. We will see the recent outcomes in a revised, somewhat less ambitious legislation. The story of this chapter is thus of a balancing act which the Spanish authorities and the courts play between strict regulation of future development and the need to manage existing (legal or illegal) development in the coastal zone.
