Mediterranean tourists will know the feeling. You wake up early, gobble breakfast and rush to the beach only to find that all the best spots are staked out by towels, with no occupants in sight. Yet German holidaymakers, long maligned as the scourge of Europe’s deckchairs, may not be to blame.

Beach towel wars have now spread to Italy, as higher prices force locals to take desperate action to guarantee a space on the dwindling public beaches. So concerned are authorities that they are levying €1,000 (£675) fines on the culprits who they claim are “illegally occupying” beach space.

Damiano Guerrini, the head of the port authority at Imperia, which is responsible for enforcing marine law on much of the Riviera, said that he had received “dozens of complaints from families with young children who arrive at the public beach at 8.30 in the morning only to find it already covered in towels whose owners are absent”.

His deputy, Danilo Manconi, said that all public beaches along the Riviera would be monitored at dawn. At Chiavari, police are more proactive still – regularly removing umbrellas and deckchairs secured with chains and padlocks and left by holidaymakers overnight to “bag space”.

The beachside bandits claim, however, that they have been forced into antisocial behaviour by the way that the beaches are managed.

Almost all Italian beaches are privately run. With the cry “ Tutti al mare!” (everyone to the sea), Italian cities normally empty in August, with many families heading not only for the same resort each year but also for the same familiar strip of sand.

This year, however, many hard-pressed Italians are finding it increasingly expensive to rent deckchairs and umbrellas, with charges of €20 per day, 6 per cent higher than last year. Some have opted for a shorter seaside break such as a week, or for long weekends only.

Others lower their standards – reluctantly – and use the free beaches every seaside town council is obliged to maintain. These are often no more than a postage-stamp-sized stretch of sand or rock – and in the fight for space, families are sending one of their party to the beach at daybreak to put towels down as markers.

Italian police say that the law governing the sea and shoreline – the codice di navigazione – forbids any “occupation of public territory” – and leaving a towel amounts to occupation. So too does implanting a portable umbrella in the sand or placing an unauthorised deckchair on it.

At resorts such as Diano Mariana and Chiavari dozens of holidaymakers have been fined, many of them old age pensioners, who are often poor sleepers or early risers.

“I always get up early, so I put the towels down for my grandchildren while they are still asleep,” one pensioner told Corriere della Sera. “I thought it was my right as a grandparent.”

Angelo Basso, the Mayor of Diano Marina, said that many of those fined had protested to him that they had resorted to the public beach because they could not afford to pay the charges at beach concessions, and that the €1,000 fine had ruined their holiday as well as their family budget.

Mr Basso countered that in summer the resort’s population rose from 6,000 to 60,000, and “on the public beaches there is a battle for every square centimetre.

“We have to find some way of guaranteeing everyone a peaceful time by the sea.”

Littoral truth

96: Italian beaches have been rated exceptional by Europe’s Foundation for Environmental Education

15: of these were in Tuscany, the top-rated region

Source: www.initaly.com