Alicante’s San Juan beach has picked up an unusual accolade: it is one of just seven beaches in the world to have held a Blue Flag continuously throughout the scheme’s 40-year history.
The Costa Blanca beach received recognition at the III International Blue Flag Congress in Islantilla, Huelva, marking an uninterrupted run dating back to the first Blue Flags in 1987.
And San Juan is not the only Costa Blanca name on the remarkably short list.
Carrer la Mar in El Campello and La Fossa in Calpe have also maintained the award throughout all 40 editions.
Three Costa Blanca beaches make the list
Seven beaches received recognition for their uninterrupted record, and all seven are in Spain.
Alongside San Juan, Carrer la Mar and La Fossa, they are El Carregador in Alcalá de Xivert, Sant Antoni in Cullera, Nord in Gandía and Bastiagueiro in Oleiros, Galicia.
That means five of the seven are in the Valencian Community, with three on the Costa Blanca.
The achievement is particularly notable because beaches do not simply retain a Blue Flag once they have received one. They must continue to meet the programme’s requirements.
What does a Blue Flag actually mean?
The familiar blue-and-white flags flying above Spanish beaches are not simply tourism awards.
Assessors look at four broad areas: bathing-water quality, environmental management, safety and services, and accessibility.
For a heavily used urban beach such as San Juan, maintaining those standards for four decades means adapting as both the coastline and expectations of beach facilities have changed.
Alicante councillor for the environment Manuel Villar credited San Juan’s long run to the quality of its water, the condition of the beach and the services provided along the coast.
Alicante has plenty of Blue Flags
San Juan’s 40-year record comes during another strong year for Alicante city’s beaches.
In 2026, every city beach apart from Albufereta received a Blue Flag.
Alicante also took part in the international congress, where around 300 tourism, scientific, university, environmental and emergency-management professionals gathered to discuss coastal sustainability, health, safety and management.
Juan Luis Beresaluze, head of Alicante’s Environment Service, joined a discussion examining how the Blue Flag programme has influenced coastal towns.
He used Alicante’s four decades of experience to explain some of the practices the city has adopted to maintain the distinction.
Forty years does not mean everything always works
A Blue Flag should not be confused with a guarantee that nothing ever goes wrong at the beach.
San Juan had problems with its foot showers this summer, when a fault at one of the two pumping stations caused interruptions and low water pressure for more than two weeks.
The incident did not erase the beach’s wider record, but it is a useful reminder of what the award represents.
Blue Flag status relates to a defined set of environmental, water-quality, safety, service and accessibility criteria. It does not mean every piece of beach infrastructure will work perfectly every day.
For San Juan, however, meeting the programme’s requirements year after year since 1987 has now put it in a group containing just seven beaches.
And with Calpe and El Campello joining Alicante on that list, the Costa Blanca accounts for almost half of them.
Bridging the Gap’s recap
- San Juan has maintained a Blue Flag throughout the programme’s 40-year history.
- Only seven beaches received recognition for achieving the uninterrupted run.
- All seven are in Spain.
- Three are on the Costa Blanca: San Juan, La Fossa in Calpe and Carrer la Mar in El Campello.
- Five of the seven are in the Valencian Community.
- Blue Flag criteria cover water quality, environmental management, safety, services and accessibility.
- Alicante city secured Blue Flags for all its beaches except Albufereta in 2026.
- San Juan’s Blue Flag record stretches back to 1987.
San Juan Beach.
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