Cala Baeza El Campello: A New Beach Is Coming This Summer
Lifestyle · Area News · June 2026 · Altea Moraira Villas
El Campello is gaining a new cala this summer. A €3 million government regeneration project at Cala Baeza is in its final phase — and by mid-June, what was once a silted, unusable inlet is expected to open as a proper beach for the first time in decades.
A Cala That Disappeared — and Is Coming Back
Cala Baeza, also known as Cala Merced, sits on the northern stretch of El Campello's coastline. For years it has been little more than a neglected inlet: two deteriorating jetties, accumulated silt and clay, a tangle of spontaneous vegetation, and a handful of abandoned boats sheltering where a beach was supposed to be.
The story goes back to 1974, when two converging jetties were built to shelter the cala and encourage sand to accumulate between them. The idea was sound. The execution, over the following decades, was not. The jetties suffered serious damage from storms and coastal flooding, were never properly repaired, and the sediment that built up between them turned out to be silt and clay rather than sand — compacting over time into a waterlogged mass that blocked water circulation and eventually choked the cala entirely. The concession was eventually used as an informal boat anchorage, a use that was never part of the original authorisation.
The result was a stretch of coastline that had been degraded for half a century. Until now.
What the Project Is Creating
Spain's Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge approved the regeneration project definitively in September 2023 and awarded the construction contract to SATO — one of Spain's most experienced maritime and port construction firms — for €2.965 million. Works began in October 2025 and are now in their final phase, with completion expected by mid-June 2026.
The transformation is substantial. The north jetty, built over 50 years ago and beyond repair, has been fully demolished and removed. Its removal allows seawater to circulate freely through the cala again, restoring the natural tidal energy that had been blocked for decades. The south jetty has been retained and conditioned to act as natural protection for the new beach.
The silted sediment — some 46,700 cubic metres of it — has been dredged out. Fresh sand has been brought in from quarry sources to create the new beach, with a portion of the dredged material redirected to help regenerate the nearby Cala Lanuza. The result, once complete, will be a proper beach of over 130 metres in length, nearly 3,000 square metres of dry sand surface and a maximum width of 30 metres. A new pedestrian path of almost 1,000 square metres will connect the beach directly to the surrounding area, replacing what had previously been an inaccessible stretch of coast.
The environmental monitoring contract, awarded separately in early 2026, ensures that water quality and waste management standards are maintained both during construction and into the operational phase once the beach opens.
Open This Summer
According to sources from the central government cited in a May 2026 report by Diario Información, the works are expected to be complete by mid-June — meaning Cala Baeza should be open and accessible for the 2026 summer season. For residents and visitors in El Campello this year, it will simply appear as a new beach where there wasn't one before.
For those who knew the cala in its degraded state, the change will be striking. For those discovering El Campello for the first time this summer, it will just be part of what the town offers — a sheltered cala a short walk from the centre, backed by a pedestrian path, with clean water and natural coastal protection provided by the conditioned south jetty.
What This Means for El Campello
El Campello is already one of the more overlooked towns on the Costa Blanca — not in a negative sense, but in the sense that it tends to be underestimated relative to what it actually offers. It has a genuine town character, a working fishing port, a long sandy beach running through the centre, good transport links to Alicante via the TRAM, and a residential fabric that mixes local families with international buyers who have found that it delivers on liveability without the price levels of more prominent destinations.
The addition of a new, well-designed beach on what was previously a degraded stretch of coast is a meaningful quality-of-life upgrade — not a marketing story, but a genuine improvement to what the town has to offer. It also signals the kind of institutional attention that tends to arrive ahead of rising interest: government investment in coastal regeneration is not a coincidence, and El Campello's coastline has attracted more of it in recent years than most comparable towns along this stretch.
If you are considering property in El Campello or the wider southern Costa Blanca, the team at Altea Moraira Villas is active in this market. Get in touch to discuss what is currently available.
