Maspalomas

Maspalomas sits at the southern tip of Gran Canaria, where a dune field of about four hundred hectares meets the sea. The beach runs east from the lighthouse along the foot of the dunes and continues into Playa del Inglés, and the two are effectively one shore with different crowds on it.

The dunes are the reason it is protected and the reason it looks like nowhere else in Europe. They are mobile, fed by sand moving in from the sea and pushed inland by the trade wind, and they have been a nature reserve since 1987. Behind them lies a saltwater lagoon, La Charca, with palms and birdlife — a remnant of the wetland the whole area once was.

The shore is fine golden sand on a long open Atlantic strand, with a gentle slope and water that is cooler than the latitude suggests because of the Canary Current — around 19°C in winter and 23 in late summer. Wind is reliable and often strong in the afternoon. The dune field behind is crossed by marked paths; walking off them is prohibited and enforced, since the vegetation holding the sand is fragile.

Development stops at the dune line and does not cross it, which is the whole point. Resorts and apartment blocks sit behind, with a promenade at the Playa del Inglés end and almost nothing at the lighthouse end. Sections of the beach are informally understood as naturist and as a long-established gay meeting area, both signposted in practice by custom rather than by notice.

Six square kilometres of moving dune between a lagoon and a lighthouse, and a nature reserve you walk through on marked paths only. The dunes are shrinking — sand no longer reaches them from the coast the way it did, and the reserve publishes the measurements. The southern end has been one of Europe's principal gay beaches since the 1960s.