Before you come
Any page that tells you where the waves are brings people to where the waves are. This one too, and that is the intention.
What we do care about is who. Atalaia exists to bring this coast the kind of visitor who treats it well: the one who says hello, eats in the village bar, leaves the beach as they found it, and understands that this is not scenery, it is where somebody lives. That visit leaves the coast better than it found it, and that is the stated aim of the project.
So here is what we ask.
This is not a list of manners. Every point is here because it has already happened, and because what followed was a row in the car park or a ruined beach.
The car park is not your campsite
The beach car park is for going down to the beach. The people who live here also want to park and go for a swim: if you turn up in a van, do not take the best spot for the whole week. And if your plan is to block access to the beach, fill your tank at the public taps and wash your dishes at the village fountains, please stay somewhere else. The rubbish tax is paid here all year round, and it is not low.
Grey water goes to a proper disposal point
Emptying your tank into the ditch, the sand or the stream is one of the things that upsets people most. There is no discreet version of it: it shows, and it smells.
If you need to shit, not in the dunes
Forgive the bluntness, but we have seen it so many times we are still paying a therapist to forget it. Trowel, bag, take it out with you. It is, literally, the complaint people who live here repeat most often, and the one that turns goodwill into hostility fastest. We can't go for a walk here for months after the season ends.
Your rubbish leaves with you
In August every bin is already overflowing. Leaving your bag beside a full one is the same as dropping it on the ground with an extra step.
Do not park on the dunes, or walk on them
That low scrubby plant that looks like nothing is what holds the beach in place. Where it gets driven over or trodden down, the sand goes, and the beach goes with it. It comes back in decades. This is not your front yard, it is a natural space.
Count the heads before you paddle out
If you arrive and there are a lot of heads in the water, go and find somewhere else. There is plenty of coast. And be honest about your level: getting into something beyond you is not only a risk to you, it creates chaos and leads to conflicts.
Say hello
It sounds trivial. It is not. The difference between an outsider and someone who came is usually saying good morning when you get to the car park, or enter the water.
Not out of politeness. Because the coast is finite and it already shows, and because the people who have lived here all their lives deserve to find parking, quiet and their own beach as they always did.
And because a project that brings people somewhere is obliged to say on what terms. If you think something here is wrong, missing, or not being honoured, tell us.