Joe's Beach: Looking for Radioactive Mutants at "Chernobyl" Beach

Published in BCNWEEK
Issue # 10
July 21 - 27, 2006

Oh happy day! It’s the beach issue! Sun, sand, clear Mediterranean water, orange inflatable floaties. Good things. Good times. A little too good. Where’s the grime? Everything has its dark side. Mustn’t every beach issue as well? In search of something more interesting than happiness, more taxing than relaxed sunbathing, one name kept seeping through the cracks like radiation. Chernobyl. Nyet! Not in the Ukraine. Chernobyl, Barcelona.
Fittingly, this supposedly disgusting beach lies right in front of the FECSA energy plant. You may think you have no idea where the FECSA plant is, but you’ve seen it a hundred times. When you’ve looked up the coast in direction Badalona, you’ve seen three massive chimneys. They belong to FECSA.
When you get off of RENFE at Sant Adria de Besos, a machine-generated whirring sound descends upon you, shortly becoming a constant buzz inside your cerebro. The beach itself looks rather normal. The Forum’s solar panels are on the right, the sand is normal, clean enough, and there are plenty of people. If you ignore the FECSA drone in your head and the long white tube extending from the plant into the water, this is una playa bastante bonita.
I ask the lifeguards what the tube is. It draws water into the plant for the cooling system, they explain, and then FECSA spits the warmed water back into the sea. Pero no tiran nada, eh. That’s to say there’s nothing more than water shooting out of that industrial, whirring monster. Nothing? Do you believe it? I probe a little further. “Then why is this beach nicknamed Chernobyl.” “Ah,” they respond, “Chernobyl is the next beach over. Walk alongside the plant and under the tube.”
Passing under the tubes is a filthy experience. There couldn’t possibly be any more opportunities to catch tetanus in one single place. Empty and broken whiskey bottles, rusted cans and sardine tin, and potato chip bags accompany the smell of piss and the sound of rushing water leaving the FECSA plant via a channel labelled “Danger of death due to strong currents.” That’s just in case anyone wanted to swim in water on its way out of a power plant cooling system.
I found the Chernobyl beach lifeguard. He has no special story to tell of a man with three pichas. There’s no radiation, cause it’s a thermal plant. Still, he wouldn’t be surprised if they were dumping something into the sea. But this water is mucho mas clean than the water in Barceloneta, Bogatell, or any of the BCN beaches. It’s a crystal bluegreen straight down to the clearly visible bottom. Aside from the surrounding architecture and its constant machine soundtrack, the beach is pristine. It certainly doesn’t merit the name Chernobyl, I decided.
But seeds of doubt were later sewn. I told a friend of mine the story of my excursion, and the disappointing lack of radioactive mutants. “The water is so clean!” I told him, “There’s nothing wrong with the place.” “But maybe,” he said, “it’s so clear because everything’s dead.” Hmmm.