This page records corrections and clarifications made to guides on this site, and errors that circulate widely in English about the Spanish coast that our guides deliberately contradict.
It exists because “we correct what is wrong” is easy to write on an about page and worth very little unless the corrections are published, dated and open to challenge. The log starts on 26 August 2026, which is when we began keeping it. It is not retrospective, and it is short — that is honest rather than impressive, and it will grow.
If you have been somewhere recently and found a guide out of date, write through the contact page. How we source things in the first place is set out on How We Verify.
What Goes on This Page, and What Does Not
A corrections page is only worth reading if it is honest about its own threshold, so here is ours. An entry gets written when a published error could have cost a reader something real: a wasted journey, a closed gate, a service that does not exist, a rule they would have broken. An entry also gets written when we published something about a named person that we could not stand up, whether or not anyone was misled by it. And an entry gets written when we inverted a fact — said a working thing was derelict, or put a legal designation on the wrong stretch of coast.
What does not get an entry: a superlative we removed because we could not source it, a construction date we could not confirm, a figure we replaced with a better one, a claim about a source’s provenance that we could not demonstrate. Those changes happen regularly, and the reasoning behind each of them is set out in the Sources block at the foot of the guide concerned, where the removal is recorded rather than quietly made. We keep them off this page deliberately. A register that logged every tightened phrase would run to hundreds of entries and would bury the ones that matter, which is a way of hiding things in plain sight.
If you think something belongs here that is not here, the reasoning above is what to argue with.
Corrections to Our Own Guides
26 August 2026 — Blue Flag awards now run for two years, not one
Where: Blue Flag Beaches in Spain 2026.
What we implied: that the Blue Flag list is an annual snapshot, published each spring for the season ahead.
What is actually the case: the International Blue Flag Jury awarded the 2026 round for a period of two years, covering 2026 and 2027. ADEAC describes it as a temporary transition mechanism adopted in response to changes in international accreditation requirements — the ISO/IEC 17065:2012 standard and EU Directive 2024/825. Awards granted in 2026 remain subject to verification through 2027.
Source: ADEAC, Blue Flag 2026 press release (PDF).
26 August 2026 — An unverifiable New York Times attribution, removed
Where: Cala de Enmedio, Níjar.
What we wrote: that the New York Times has written about Cala de Enmedio — a line that appears on almost every page about this cove in both English and Spanish.
Why we have taken it out: we cannot trace it to an article. Every source repeating it attributes it vaguely — a piece in the newspaper’s magazine, some time ago — and not one links anything. The only version carrying a firm headline comes from an outlet we would not rely on for anything else. The claim may well be true; it is simply not verifiable, and this site does not publish attributions it cannot stand behind. It is now noted in that guide’s sources as removed rather than quietly deleted.
What survived the check: the Guía Repsol listing did. Its 2012 edition placed the cove among the ten most beautiful places in Spain, and that attribution is specific and consistently reported. The guide now says so precisely instead of vaguely.
26 August 2026 — The Peñón de Ifach is 53.3 hectares, and you need a booking
Where: Playa de la Fossa, Calpe.
What we wrote: that the Penyal d’Ifac natural park is “the smallest natural park in Spain at around 45 hectares”, and that access to the park “can be limited at peak times, so check current conditions with the park office”.
What is actually the case. Two errors. The 45-hectare figure is the 1987 declaration; the protected boundary was extended to 53.3 hectares on 2 April 2015, and the park’s own pages have used the current figure for years. And “smallest in Spain” is a claim that circulates widely without a source behind it — the park describes itself as one of the smallest and most visited protected spaces in the Valencian Community, which is verifiable, so that is what the guide now says.
The access wording was worse, because it was vague about something specific. Since 2020 the summit path has been capped at 300 visitors a day under the park’s Plan Rector de Uso y Gestión, with a compulsory advance reservation that is personal, non-transferable and bookable up to ten days ahead. Telling a reader to “check current conditions” instead of telling them to book is the difference between a good day and a wasted drive. The guide now carries a section on it.
26 August 2026 — The Cabo de las Huertas is not a marine reserve
Where: Cala Cantalar, Alicante.
What we wrote: that the cove sits inside the “Reserva Marina del Cabo de las Huertas”. The phrase appeared five times in that guide, including in the opening line, the FAQ and the safety note, and the advice about what may be taken from the seabed rested on it.
What is actually the case: a reserva marina is a specific fisheries-protection figure in Spanish law, with its own declaration procedure, zoning and enforcement. The Cabo de las Huertas has never been declared one. The nearest genuine example is the Reserva Marina de la Isla de Tabarca, a ferry ride south. What the Cabo de las Huertas is, is a Site of Community Importance in the European Natura 2000 network, declared a Special Area of Conservation by decree of the Consell in January 2025 along with its management rules — a habitats designation rather than a fishing one.
Why it matters: the two figures carry different rules, and a reader planning to fish, collect or dive would have been working from the wrong framework. The guide now explains the distinction rather than repeating the label. This one was our error and it was in the first sentence of the article.
27 August 2026 — The Cala Montjoi access restriction was a season out of date
Where: Cala Montjoi, Roses.
What we wrote: that the road down to the cove is closed to vehicles between 10:30 and 16:00 in July and August, with the control point at the Mirador de Punta Falconera.
What is actually the case: three things had changed. For the 2026 season the Ajuntament de Roses runs the closure from 1 July to 31 August, not from 15 July; the morning cut-off is 09:30, not 10:30; and the barrier has been moved to the spot known as Torre del Sastre. The figures we published were those of the 2021 to 2023 seasons, which are still repeated on a great many pages. The restriction applies to vehicles of four wheels or more only.
Why it matters: a reader arriving at ten in the morning on the strength of our figure believed they had half an hour in hand. They did not. They would have driven the whole climb and been turned round at the barrier.
What we had also missed: the guide said the camí de ronda was “completely unaffected by any of this”. Under Pla Alfa level 4, the extreme forest-fire rating published daily by the Cos d’Agents Rurals, the closure extends to people on foot and on bicycles, and the camí de ronda itself is shut between Punta de la Figuerassa and Jóncols. The guide now carries a section on it.
Source: Ajuntament de Roses, restrictions on vehicle access to the Roses coves, updated 1 July 2026.
27 August 2026 — There is no bus to the Roses coves
Where: Cala Montjoi, Roses.
What we wrote: that readers turned away at the barrier could “take the seasonal municipal bus that Roses runs between the town and its coves in summer”, and should check timetables with the tourist office.
What is actually the case: no such service exists. The natural park’s own information sheet on the Roses regulation states that no specific public transport has been laid on, and names hiring a taxi in Roses as the alternative. A tourist train runs out of Roses and passes Cala Montjoi, but it does not stop at any point inside the park.
Why it matters: this is the worst category of error a site like this can make. It was not a stale figure; it was a helpful-sounding service that had been assumed into existence, offered to a reader who had just been told they could not drive. Someone could have planned an August day around it.
Source: Parc Natural de Cap de Creus, questions on the Roses access regulation (PDF).
27 August 2026 — The excavations at Aiguablava did not stop in 2014
Where: Platja d’Aiguablava, Begur.
What we wrote: that the Centre d’Arqueologia Subaquàtica de Catalunya “ran campaigns here from 2006 to 2014” — a closed period, in the past tense.
What is actually the case: the work has continued. In autumn 2024 the centre sounded a corner of the cove that had not been explored before and found a fifth wreck, a Roman ship of the imperial period dated to the second century AD — and, for the first time in this anchorage, preserved hull timber rather than only cargo. A frame and two strakes. Four wrecks were known before it, three Roman and one medieval, which we had also not mentioned.
Why it matters: less because the date was wrong than because of what the wrong date implied. Written as a finished project, it turned a site where something is still being found into a museum piece. The guide now says the campaigns have run since 2006 and describes the 2024 find.
Source: Catalan press coverage of November 2024 quoting the CASC archaeologist directing the excavation. Noted in that guide’s sources as press reporting rather than a publication of the centre, because we have not found a formal excavation report.
27 August 2026 — We said the Iberian site at Castell was open. It had been shut for years
Where: Platja de Castell, Palamós.
What we wrote: that the settlement “belongs to the Generalitat, is managed by the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya and is open to walk around”, and we told readers to climb up to it in the late afternoon.
What is actually the case: storm damage and landslide risk closed the site to visitors for years. Only the lower platform was reopened, in October 2024, timed to the European Heritage Days — and within weeks the settlement’s main cistern was deliberately vandalised, stone blocks torn out and thrown into it, damage the museum put at over five thousand euros. Whether the whole site is walkable on any given day is not something a guide can assert. It now tells readers to check with the museum first.
What else we took out: the guide credited the settlement with two square towers, 64 storage pits and two cisterns, dated its occupation to the first century AD and attributed the excavation to Lluís Barceló i Bou. None of that survives a check against the museum’s own material. Barceló i Bou rediscovered the site in 1935; the excavations came later. The abandonment is dated to the first century BC. The specific counts are gone, replaced by what the register actually describes, and the site’s 1996 declaration as a cultural asset of national interest — which we had not mentioned at all — is now in.
Why it matters: the invented precision is the more embarrassing error, but the access claim is the one that would have cost somebody a wasted climb. Both came from the same habit: writing confidently about a place from a distance.
27 August 2026 — An unverifiable claim about a named man, withdrawn
Where: Cala Estreta, Palamós.
What we wrote: of Francesc “Quico” Cots, who lived in the fisherman’s barraca at Cala Estreta for fifteen years, that “the town hall tried to move him on more than once”.
Why we have taken it out: we cannot source it. It is a specific allegation about how a public body treated a named private individual, and it was published on the strength of nothing we can now point to. That is the kind of sentence this site has no business printing. It is gone, and it is recorded here rather than deleted quietly, because a man’s name was attached to it.
What replaced it: what the council’s own record does say. The barraca is municipal property, protected under the Pla Especial de Protecció del Patrimoni Local, inventoried by the Generalitat’s architectural heritage service and catalogued in the Costa Brava maritime and fishing heritage inventory. The 1531 documentary reference was found by the Palamós historian Pere Trijueque. The guide also gave the hut’s dimensions as five metres by three and a half; the published figure is a floor area of about 26 square metres, and that is what it says now.
And what we had understated: the fire. It happened on Sant Esteve, 26 December 2025, while Cots was away with his family, and it gutted the interior. He raised the alarm himself. The council filed a complaint and the Mossos d’Esquadra opened an investigation; Catalan media reported the fire as deliberately set, and we have found no published conclusion, so the guide says exactly that and no more.
27 August 2026 — The Cala Nans lighthouse is not a sealed ruin. It is a working light
Where: Platja Sa Conca, Cadaqués.
What we wrote: that after Cadaqués saved it from demolition, what survived was “not exactly a monument” — closed, weathered, with its doors and windows bricked up against vandals — and that the walk out there ends at “a sealed building on a headland”.
What is actually the case: the Far de Cala Nans is an operating navigational light. It was automated in the 1960s and has had no resident keeper since, and it shows white in groups of four flashes every twenty-five seconds. The accounts of the residents’ campaign say it led not only to the building being spared but to its rehabilitation. Our description of bricked-up openings is not something we can source at all.
What we had missed: the detail that makes the place worth the walk. It is the only lighthouse in Catalonia with no road access for motor vehicles. Everything ever carried up there to maintain it went on foot, along the same path the visitor walks.
Also removed: we gave the lighthouse’s start date as 1 September 1864. The year is well attested; the day is not, and we cannot source it. The guide now says it was inaugurated in 1864 and explains that it had been provided for in the 1847 general plan for lighting the coasts under Isabel II.
Why it matters: the error made a living thing sound dead, which is the opposite of what a guide should do, and it did it with a false-sounding specificity — bricked-up windows — that nobody had any business inventing.
27 August 2026 — A second shuttle bus we could not find, removed before anyone relied on it
Where: Cala del Moraig, Benitatxell.
What we wrote: that a free shuttle bus runs several times daily from the village down to the cove and back, and that it is “the sensible fallback if parking is full”.
What we can actually establish: nothing. The council’s own access page for Cala del Moraig does not mention a shuttle service, and we have not found one in any municipal material. We are not saying it does not exist; we are saying we could not confirm it, which is not the same thing and is why the guide now says exactly that.
Why we are treating it this seriously: because this is the second invented-looking bus we have found on this site in one week. The first was at Cala Montjoi in Roses, where we told readers turned away at the barrier to take a municipal bus that the natural park’s own information sheet says does not exist. Once is an error. Twice is a pattern, and the pattern is that when a guide reaches the point of saying “and if that fails, you can always…”, the sentence gets finished from expectation rather than from a source. Both guides now name the alternative we can stand behind and say plainly where the uncertainty is.
Also corrected here: the parking fee was given as “in the region of €12–15 in recent seasons” and the closing time as “7:00–9:00 PM depending on the season”. Both were guesses presented as ranges. The rate at the scheme’s launch was €12 per vehicle per day, charged from 9:00 to 19:00, and the guide now gives that figure with an instruction to check the current season rather than a range that covers whatever the answer turns out to be.
27 August 2026 — We told readers the Cova Tallada was open at Easter. It is not
Where: La Cova Tallada, Dénia/Jávea.
What we wrote: that a prior reservation is mandatory between 15 June and 30 September, and that “from October 1 to June 14, access is open and needs no booking”.
What is actually the case: the regulated periods are wider on both sides. The summer window’s close is given as mid-October rather than the end of September, and there are further windows requiring an authorisation over Easter — from the Saturday before Palm Sunday to San Vicente Monday, which fell on 28 March to 13 April in 2026 — and again from 28 April to 5 May. Our sentence positively told a reader that an Easter walk needed no booking. It does. They would have driven to Les Rotes, walked to the checkpoint and been turned back.
What we had also left out: three conditions that decide whether a plan works at all. Reservations can only be made ten days ahead and no earlier, so our advice to “book early” was not advice that could be followed. One reservation covers a maximum of five people. And there is a limit of one hour and thirty minutes inside the cave, counted from the hour printed on the authorisation rather than from arrival — so a slow walk in eats the visit.
What we have added: the legal basis, which we should have had from the start. Access is set by Order 7/2020 of 9 March of the Valencian ministry for agriculture, rural development, climate emergency and ecological transition, updated by a resolution of 27 April 2023. It is regional environmental law, not a seasonal arrangement, which is exactly why the checkpoint does not negotiate.
27 August 2026 — A protection designation we put on the wrong beach
Where: Playa Mascarat, Altea.
What we wrote: that the beach “sits within the marine area of the Serra Gelada protected zone”.
Why it has gone: the geography does not support it. The Parc Natural de la Serra Gelada, declared in 2005, does include part of Altea, and most of its 5,564 hectares are marine. But the park is built around the Serra Gelada ridge and the waters off it, between the bay of Benidorm and the Alfàs–Altea bay — the coast south of Altea town. Playa Mascarat is at the northern edge of the municipality, on the Calpe boundary, several kilometres in the other direction. We could not find the beach inside any published boundary of that park, and we have removed the claim rather than soften it.
Why it matters: this is the second time we have attached the wrong conservation figure to a beach — the first was calling the Cabo de las Huertas a marine reserve at Cala Cantalar. The failure mode is the same both times: a protected area exists somewhere in the same municipality, and the sentence gets written as though administrative boundaries follow town names. They do not. What the guide says now is that we do not know which designation, if any, covers the water at Mascarat, and that we will name one when we can point at a boundary.
28 August 2026 — A bus we said did not exist, and a bus we invented: the same mistake twice, in opposite directions
Where: Cala Sa Tuna, Begur, and Platja d’Aiguablava, Begur.
What we wrote: at Sa Tuna, that the old fishermen’s path from Begur is downhill on the way there and uphill on the way back, “and there is no bus to rescue you”. At Aiguablava, that Begur runs a shuttle “roughly May to mid-September”.
What is actually the case: the Bus Platges Begur has run every summer since 1996. For 2026 it operates daily from 13 June to 13 September, on three circular routes out of the plaça Forgas, serving Sa Riera, Sa Tuna, Aiguablava and Fornells, with runs to Esclanyà. A single journey costs €1.50, a day ticket €3, a twenty-trip pass €20; over-65s and 6 to 16 year-olds pay €1 and under-5s travel free. It stops at Sa Tuna. So one guide sent readers up a forty-minute hill at the end of a beach day telling them nothing could help, while the guide to the next cove along described the same service starting a fortnight earlier than it does.
Why it matters, and what it says about us: in the same week we removed two bus services from this site that turned out not to exist — at Cala Montjoi and at Cala del Moraig. Having been caught inventing transport, we then found we had also denied transport that was there, on a route where the denial costs a reader a hard climb in August. The failure is not “we are optimistic about buses” or “we are pessimistic about buses”. It is that transport was being written from assumption in both directions, and never checked against a council timetable. Every bus, train and shuttle mentioned anywhere on this site is now either sourced to the operator or explicitly flagged as unconfirmed.
28 August 2026 — We offered the Cabo de Gata shuttle for a season it does not cover
Where: Which Spanish Beaches Limit Visitor Numbers in 2026.
What we wrote: that a reader turned away at the Cabo de Gata barrier could take the shuttle bus from San José, which ran “roughly hourly from mid-morning, with the last return in the evening” — no operator, no line number, no season. The comparison section then said flatly that Cabo de Gata gives you a shuttle serving all five beaches.
What is actually the case: the service is line M-216, run by Autocares Bernardo under the Consorcio de Transporte Metropolitano del Área de Almería, and it operates from 11 July to 6 September. The barrier operates from 20 June to 27 September. There are therefore around three weeks at the start of the regulated season and three at the end when the barrier is turning cars away and no bus runs at all.
Why it matters: this is the “and if that fails, you can always…” failure in a third form. Not a bus we invented and not a bus we denied, but a real bus offered for a period it does not cover — which leaves a reader in precisely the same position on 25 June or on 15 September. It also means the undertaking given in the entry above, that every service mentioned on this site was sourced to its operator, was not yet true when we published it. It is now: the guide names the line, the operator and both calendars, and says where they diverge.
Source: Consorcio de Transporte Metropolitano del Área de Almería, timetable for line M-216.
29 August 2026 — We called Genoveses the largest beach in Cabo de Gata, in the headline
Where: Playa de los Genoveses, Níjar.
What we wrote: that Playa de los Genoveses is the largest beach in the Cabo de Gata natural park — in the title of the page, and again in the second paragraph.
What is actually the case: Genoveses is a little over a kilometre long. The straight run of sand at San Miguel de Cabo de Gata, beside the salt flats on the western side of the cape, is longer on every published figure we can find: the Junta de Andalucía’s accessible-beach register gives that beach 2,500 metres, and local guides count it as one section of an unbroken strip of more than twelve kilometres between Torre García and the lighthouse. Playa de los Muertos at Carboneras, at 1,160 metres, is longer than Genoveses too. The guide now calls it the largest of the five beaches behind the summer vehicle barrier, which is a claim we can stand behind.
Why this is here rather than in that guide’s sources: the threshold set out at the top of this page keeps unsourceable superlatives off it, and most of them belong in the Sources block of the guide concerned. This was not one of those. The claim was affirmatively false rather than merely uncitable, and it was in the title, which is the most visible line on the page and the line other sites quote.
Fixed in the same pass: the parking charge, published as around €5 when the 2026 figure is €6 per vehicle; and the shuttle from San José, offered for “summer and Easter” when line M-216 runs from 11 July to 6 September only — the same error recorded in the entry above, replicated in a second guide.
Source: Junta de Andalucía, accessible-beach register entry for Playa de San Miguel de Cabo de Gata.
30 August 2026 — A fourth transport error: a boat that does not stop where we said it stops
Where: Cala Pola, Tossa de Mar, and The 15 Best Beaches on the Costa Brava.
What we wrote: that the Fondo Cristal glass-bottomed boat “runs between Tossa de Mar and Cala Giverola and calls at Cala Pola roughly every half hour in season”, that it was “the most comfortable arrival of the three”, and that “it lands you on the sand rather than at a barrier”. The ranking page offered the same boat as one of the two smart ways to reach the cove.
What is actually the case: the operator, Fons de Vidre SL, publishes departures in two directions only — Tossa de Mar to Cala Giverola, and Cala Giverola back to Tossa. Neither departure board lists Cala Pola. Its own site carries a page describing the cove, which is probably where the confusion started, but a page about a place is not a scheduled stop at it. The frequency was wrong too, in a way that only holds for part of the year: sailings are every thirty minutes from 22 June to 15 September, and hourly from 1 May to 21 June, from 16 to 30 September, and through April and October.
Why it matters: a reader who took our advice would have bought a ticket expecting to be put ashore at Cala Pola and would have been carried on to Giverola, a different cove through a different headland, with a car left behind in Tossa. That is the fourth transport failure recorded on this page, after a bus we invented at Cala Montjoi, a bus we invented at Cala del Moraig, a bus we denied at Cala Sa Tuna and a real bus offered for the wrong season at Cabo de Gata.
The part that is worse than the error: the guide’s own Sources block already said, in plain words, that we had not been able to verify the seasonal operation or the frequency of this boat. The body of the same page recommended it as the best of the ways in and gave a frequency to the half hour. The check that catches this is not a better source; it is reading the article against the honesty note we had already written at the foot of it, and that is now a standing step rather than an occasional one.
Source: Fondo Cristal, prices and timetables.
Errors We Contradict on Purpose
These are not our mistakes. They are claims repeated across English-language pages about Spanish beaches that do not survive a check, and that our guides argue against rather than quietly reproduce.
“The beach belongs to Costas, so a municipal fine is void”
The claim: beaches are state property rather than municipal, therefore the local police have no jurisdiction on the sand, therefore any fine for taking a dog onto a beach can be ignored.
Why it fails: ownership of the land and competence to regulate its use are separate questions. Article 115 of the Ley 22/1988 de Costas hands coastal municipalities a defined set of competences over that state land, including cleanliness, hygiene and public health on beaches and policing observance of the bathing-safety rules. Enforcement sits with the Policía Local under article 53 of the Ley Orgánica 2/1986.
Covered in: Dog Beaches in Alicante 2026.
Tide tables for the Spanish Mediterranean
The claim: guides that tell you to consult a tide table before visiting a Mediterranean cove.
Why it fails: the tidal range on the Spanish Mediterranean coast is roughly twenty centimetres. It is not a planning factor. On the Atlantic coast — Cádiz, Huelva, Galicia — the tide genuinely does decide the day, and our guides for those beaches say so. Applying Atlantic advice to Mediterranean coves is one of the clearest signs that a page has been assembled rather than researched.
A levante wind and the Levante coast are not the same thing
The claim: English-language sources routinely treat the two as interchangeable.
Why it fails: they are related etymologically and describe different things — one is a wind direction, the other a stretch of coastline. Confusing them produces advice that sends you to the wrong side of a headland on the wrong day.
Covered in: Levante, Poniente, Tramuntana: Choosing a Spanish Beach by the Wind.
The Cabo de Gata barrier closes at 11:30 in 2026, not 11:00
The claim: guides in English and Spanish publishing an 11:00 morning cut-off for the regulated beaches west of San José, and a regulated period running 21 June to 22 September.
Why it fails: both are the previous season’s figures. For 2026 the Delegación Territorial de Sostenibilidad y Medio Ambiente extended the morning window by half an hour, to 11:30, and the regulated period runs from 20 June to 27 September. The full band system — closed 11:30 to 14:00 and 16:30 to 18:30 — applies in the core weeks from 11 July to 6 September; outside them the day runs continuously. Turning up at 11:15 on the strength of an un-updated page is the difference between getting in and not.
Covered in: Cabo de Gata Beaches in Summer 2026.
Open Questions
Things we have not been able to settle, listed here rather than resolved silently in one direction.
Are dogs allowed at Cala de la Granadella?
English-language sources contradict each other sharply. One well-ranked page states that dogs are welcome on a lead; a visitor account from the same coast describes a no-dogs sign at the top of the descent. We have not been able to resolve this from a desk, and we are not going to guess. Granadella is a serviced, supervised, Blue Flag beach with a capacity barrier in season, and beaches in that category are the ones ordinances protect most firmly. Read the sign at the barrier. Discussed in Dog Beaches in Alicante 2026.