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Buenos días, tristeza: Ferrara beach from Torrox
Photo: Claus Hecking / DER SPIEGEL
It's a September Monday as the Germans from Torrox would love.
If only they were here.
Ten o'clock in the morning, the air in the Spanish seaside resort is already 23 degrees, the Mediterranean 25 degrees.
Fish dart through the clear, smooth water.
It could be a perfect day at the beach.
But the beach is almost deserted.
German empty.
"It's a disaster," says Rafael López.
"This area lives from German tourists. If the Germans don't come, we'll lose everything."
The host of the bar "Safari", a strong man of 69 years with sun-tanned arms and a walrus mustache, is standing on the beach promenade.
He points to the loungers that his employee is just unfolding.
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Rafael López in front of the "Safari" bar
Photo: Claus Hecking / DER SPIEGEL
The bar normally rents 150 seats, says López.
Because of the Corona distance rules, there are currently only 50. "But yesterday we didn't even have a dozen customers. How should this continue?"
The guests are missing: in Torrox, on the Costa del Sol, all over Spain.
And the hosts find themselves in dire straits.
The spring season?
Total failure.
The summer business?
Modest.
And now?
If the number of infections shoots up again dramatically, there are lockdowns again, and visitor numbers collapse again.
It couldn't get worse for this country, which so desperately needs tourism income.
The "Oktoberfest of the South" is canceled
"It's frightening that the economy is going down so massively in Spain," says Clemens Fuest, head of the Ifo Institute.
"The travel warnings and quarantine regulations hit tourism in the heart. And especially in Spain, millions of jobs depend on this sector."
According to statistics, there are 2.6 million.
Plus all the shopkeepers, craftsmen, construction workers or suppliers whose business depends on the vacationers.
Normally it would be the high season in "little Germany on the Costa del Sol", as Torrox claims.
The "Alemanes" would come in droves to their homes: now that it is getting colder and wet in large Germany and the worst summer heat is passing in small Germany.
These days they would have celebrated the "Oktoberfest of the South" like thousands of them, which the city created especially for its "residents".
Almost 4,000 Germans have registered a place of residence in Torrox, and around 3,000 more have a property here.
According to its own statements, the community of 19,000 is home to the largest German colony on the Iberian Peninsula.
There are German bakeries, German sausage, German hairdressers, a German seaman's song choir.
And 2900 hours of sunshine per year in southern Spain.
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Hairdressing salon in Torrox: "Little Germany on the Costa del Sol"
Photo: Claus Hecking / DER SPIEGEL
Most of the Germans here are retirees.
You reside in high-rise towers above the beach promenade, built by a Bremen entrepreneur in the 1970s.
And when times were normal, many came down to Rafael López's safari for a coffee or a beer.
But this year only a few dare to go to Torrox.
López estimates that a maximum of 200 Germans are currently in town.
"We haven't had a single death here yet"
"We hope that the Germans will come to us again soon," says Mayor Oscar Medina.
"Torrox is safe. We haven't had a single death here and we have only a few cases."
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"Torrox is safe," says Mayor Oscar Medina
Photo: Claus Hecking / DER SPIEGEL
Most Germans will not come this year, Arno Friedrich replies: "They are afraid."
The 71 year old pensioner has lived in Torrox for more than 20 years;
he knows hundreds of German property owners.
Some are afraid of the virus itself, says Friedrich.
Others feared being locked in their apartments in a second lockdown, as happened to some Germans in the spring.
Others were begged by their children not to go to Spain.
And short vacationers simply cannot afford to go into forced quarantine for five days after their return, as the federal and state governments decided at the end of August.
"This new regulation," says Friedrich, "finally broke Torrox's neck."
Tractors against the virus
Yet they had so much hope here at the beginning of summer.
On July 1st, the Madrid government opened the borders to tourists.
And the people of Torrox tried very hard.
According to Mayor Medina, his city had already installed spray systems over the access roads in the first wave, which doused all cars with disinfectant.
Now the community sent their cleaners to disinfect public showers four times a day.
She hired beach sheriffs who pointed out the rules of distance to bathers.
Tractors plowed the beach to fight the virus.
Finally, officials put a green sign in the sand: "playa segura" - "safe beach".
It turned out to be a passable July.
With a distance of four meters, the space on the beach in front of López Safari-Bar was even tight at times.
So close that the community cleared away the towels and umbrellas that tourists had used to reserve their favorite spots early in the morning.
But then came the second corona wave.
Followed by the travel warnings and quarantine regulations from Norway, Great Britain, Germany.
And in Torrox it got quieter and quieter.
"It's only raining cancellations," says Angela Doge, operator of the car rental company Auto 2000. She pulls out her smartphone and scrolls through the "We're sorry" and "Cancellation" emails.
Doge and her husband have decommissioned two thirds of the fleet and parked them on property.
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Garbage bags over the lamps: the Iberostar Hotel on Ferrara Beach
Photo: Claus Hecking / DER SPIEGEL
Others have already closed: restaurants, shops - and Torrox's flagship hotel.
At the entrance to the Iberostar, the operators have put rubbish bags over the lamps to protect them from sand and weather.
"Cerrado" - "Closed" is written on a piece of paper.
The four-star hotel has been closed since September 1st due to a lack of guests.
According to the hoteliers' association, only a third of the bed capacity on the Costa Del Sol was occupied in August.
Hotels close in rows along the coast.
Some probably forever.
An autumn season to forget
Until the pandemic, tourism was a growth engine of the Spanish economy, which was gradually recovering from the euro crisis.
84 million foreign visitors came to the country in 2019, more than ever before.
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Calm and flutter tape: in Malaga airport
Photo: Claus Hecking / DER SPIEGEL
According to industry forecasts, Spain's tourism industry will earn almost 100 billion euros less this year.
Many shops are barricaded at Málaga - Costa del Sol Airport, where thousands of northern Europeans usually land every day.
Red and white traffic tape blocks the way into a closed coffee bar.
Ryanair, Eurowings, TUI - all of them have recently thinned out their Spain services again.
It will be an autumn season to forget.
The collapse of tourism is dragging the whole economy down.
The industrial countries organization OECD predicted Spain a few weeks ago that it would shrink by eleven percent.
And then the holiday business was still going to some extent.
More than a million Spaniards lost their jobs in the second quarter.
According to the Fedea Institute, another 1.4 million people are at risk of losing their jobs by the end of the year.
Worry about the garbage jobs
It will hit the boys especially hard.
Again.
They were already the losers of the financial and debt crises.
At that time, youth unemployment shot over the 50 percent mark at times.
Many of the jobs created since then have been "Trabajos Basura
"
- "garbage jobs", as young Spaniards call poorly paid, precarious working conditions, for example in the hotel or restaurant business.
Now they even have to worry about these garbage jobs.
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Kehraus in Torrox: The day goes, nobody comes
Photo: Claus Hecking / DER SPIEGEL
The safari is always quiet.
A total of three tables are occupied that evening.
And on the beach the employees didn't rent ten loungers on this picture-perfect late summer day.
They may soon have to apply for social benefits again.
Because the boss is considering closing the bar in the next few days for the rest of the season.
"My wife and I have saved money, we will survive the winter," says Rafael López.
"But if it continues like this next spring, we won't know what to do."
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