﻿Valdevaqueros is one of the last remaining unspoilt beaches in southern Spain, where the sky above the golden sands is filled with kites hauling surfers over the waves. Currently the beach has little more than an access road lined with camper vans from Germany, France, Italy and Britain, filled with windsurfers and kitesurfers lured by the area’s strong winds. 
For decades it has been a world apart from the concrete-lined beaches of Torremolinos and Marbella along the coast, yet on 29 May the local council in Tarifa approved plans to build a tourist complex right next to the beach, with 1,400 hotel rooms and 350 flats. Environmental and conservation groups have protested that the project will harm the habitats of protected species, but for most councillors here the issue is simple: jobs. In this town of 18,000 inhabitants, 2,600 are out of work as Spain faces its worst economic crisis in at least half a century, one that has cast doubt on the future of the euro. 
“Traditional sources of income such as fishing are dying out, now that fleets are being dismantled and fish stocks are depleted, so tourism is the only way out, as long as it is sustainable,” said Sebastián Galindo, a councillor from the Socialist Party, which is in opposition in Tarifa but voted with the governing People’s Party to give the project the green light. 
Tarifa’s Mayor, Juan Andrés Gil, declined to comment on the project, but Galindo said it complies with environmental standards. 
The complex would be 800 metres from the coast, comfortably beyond the minimum of 200 metres stipulated by a law designed to prevent more ugly developments like those that blighted much of Spain’s coastline when mass tourism first descended on its shores in the 1960s and 1970s.