Barceloneta Beach

Barcelona’s sun-soaked Barceloneta Beach didn’t exist thirty years ago. Where tourists now sprawl on golden sand, factories once belched smoke and railway tracks divided the city from the sea. For the 1992 Olympics, authorities imported thousands of tons of sand—some sources say from Egypt, others from the Ebro River—to create two miles of artificial coastline. The beach now loses roughly 30,000 cubic meters of sand annually to erosion, requiring constant ‘topping up’ to maintain the illusion of permanence.