Saving lifeguards: protest in favor of regulation of teams on Catalan beaches

Who looks after lifeguards after they have rescued someone on the beach? 

Dozens of beach lifeguards demonstrated on Tuesday in front of the Catalan government headquarters building, urging officials to regulate the different teams across the Catalan coastline.

The group 'SOS Socorristes' claims each city council in the territory has its own rules, such as the number of square meters each lifeguard has to control or how close lifeguard posts should be to one another.

Lifeguards are asking for a governmental decree that they view as "basic." They say that the new legislation would prevent local authorities from determining different starting times for the lifeguard service.

"Some city councils place lifeguard towers 500 meters apart and you have 10,000 people in between, this does not guarantee any surveillance nor a response," Nacho Ibañez, spokesperson for SOS Socorristes, told media outlets.

One of the other major demands is to have similar start and end dates, as in Catalonia there are certain city councils, such as Sitges or Lloret de Mar, which start the service in April, while others do it more than two months later.

For them, this is a problem as there are a lot of people swimming on beaches before the Sant Joan festivities in late June.

"This is a big difference, Sitges and Lloret de Mar have seasons that we consider normal, and some other towns are still not offering lifeguard services on June 20, we believe that if there were a decree in Catalonia, this would not be the case," Ibañez said.

Lifeguards from Barcelona, Girona, and Tarragona warned of the longer and warmer summers, which see more people going to the beaches, increasing the number of drownings.

During the demonstration, lifeguards criticized their working conditions, as many of them work more than nine hours a day under the heavy sun and on top of high chairs that constitute "a work risk," Ibañez told journalists.

Currently, some city councils are improving the lifeguard towers, covering them with ceilings and polarized windows.

The request is inspired by the decrees in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands.