Automatic Pool Covers in Mont-roig del Camp

Mont-roig del Camp has 2,614 pools on the Land Registry

According to the Land Registry there are 2,614 uncovered pools registered in Mont-roig del Camp, 86 more than in 2022, when there were 2,528: a rise of 3.4% in four years. That figure makes the town third of the 184 municipalities in the province of Tarragona, behind El Vendrell (2,807) and Calafell (2,802), and ahead of L’Ametlla de Mar (2,342), Cambrils (1,837), Tortosa (1,718), Cunit (1,582), the city of Tarragona (1,533), Roda de Berà (1,321), El Catllar (1,270), Reus (1,125) and Salou (824). Fewer than 200 pools separate the top three: this is a province where the pools are spread right along its coastline.

The province of Tarragona adds up to 41,968 pools and has gained 1,825 since 2022, 4.5% in four years. Catalonia as a whole has 204,648 pools across 936 municipalities: Barcelona leads with 108,322, Girona is second with 46,007, Tarragona third and Lleida fourth with 8,351. For scale: Madrid is the first province in Spain with 147,555 pools, Alicante the second with 132,495, and Málaga records 83,789. Tarragona is not in that league by sheer volume, but Mont-roig del Camp stands out for concentration: 2,614 pools in 63.32 km² is around 41 per square kilometre, and its total is more than eleven times the provincial average of 228 pools per municipality (41,968 shared between 184). It also works out at around 18 pools for every 100 of its 14,652 registered residents.

A medium-sized municipality holding that many pools is no accident, and the explanation lies in the housing stock. The 2021 Population and Housing Census counts 16,661 family dwellings, of which only 5,525 are main residences and 11,136 are not: 66.8% of the stock is occasional-use housing, two non-main homes for every main one. That is the profile of a tourist-residential town of owner-occupied houses, reinforced by the number of campsites within the municipality and by a population register in which 28.41% are residents of foreign nationality. And where a pool is only used for half the year, a cover makes even more sense: it is working in the months when nobody is standing in front of it.

A necessary word of caution about these numbers, so that nobody reads more into them than they say. The Land Registry census under-records: it is a floor, not a ceiling, because some pools are never declared and others are entered late. It also makes no distinction between a private pool, a communal one and a campsite pool, and that matters here: the 2,614 are every body of water in the municipality, not 2,614 houses with a pool. And the figure does not break down below municipality level: there is no split by village or by estate, so it is impossible to say how many are in Miami Platja and how many in the town itself. When we divide the area up we do it by geography and by our own work, never by pinning figures on a neighbourhood.

In practice, that profile of a family pool on its own plot is the one a cover pays back fastest. Closed, it cuts evaporation by 70% to 80%: in an 8×4 metre pool, between 15,000 and 25,000 litres a year you do not have to replace. If there is a heat pump, consumption drops by 50% to 60%. The other reason people call us is safety: closed, the slats form a continuous surface that keeps anyone out of the water and holds 100 kg to the NF P90-308 standard, a French standard, not a European one. That does not make it a walk-on or step-on surface, and nobody should walk on it. You can see the whole province in pool covers in Tarragona, the full picture in pool covers in Catalonia and the rest of Catalonia in Barcelona and Girona.

Wind, salt air and a house shut up for the winter: what the Costa Dorada asks of a cover

Start with the wind, because on this stretch of coast it is the first thing that comes up in any conversation about a pool. It even shows in the street names: the streets of Miami Platja are named after winds — Mestral, Gregal, Garbí — and the municipal Club de Mar is reached from the Platja Cristall seafront promenade and from carrer del Gregal. What matters for your pool is how exposed your plot is: the municipality is built on two very different levels, the coastal strip wide open to the sea and the sheltered inland part at the foot of the Serra de Llaberia. Our Barcelona team looks at that on the day they call at your house to take the measurements. And the wind counts for two reasons. Evaporation: air moving across the water is, after the sun, the great driver of water and heat loss, and a closed cover takes that surface out of the wind. And what the wind carries: with the cover on, leaves and fine sand stay on top and are rinsed off with a hose.

The second thing is salt, and here it is almost everywhere. The municipality has 12 kilometres of coastline: low, coarse golden sand along the Miami Platja front — the Platja Cristall runs for about 1,200 metres, with its promenade — and a rocky front of coves north of the town: the Cala dels Àngels, the Cala del Pescador, the Cala Bot, the Cala Califòrnia, the Cala dels Penyals and the cala de Rifà, stitched together since 2025 by the Passeig de les Cales. To the south the municipality ends at the Platja de la Punta del Riu, at the mouth of the riu de Llastres, on the boundary with Vandellòs i l’Hospitalet de l’Infant. That salt-laden breeze is why the structure, the shaft, the brackets and the fittings are AISI 316L stainless steel, and why we never use aluminium. Maintenance is next to nothing: rinse the slats, the shaft and the brackets with fresh water. There are no rails or guides to grease, because the slats float on the water.

The third thing is what falls into the pool for the rest of the year, and here the hills come right up to the house. In the north-western sector of the municipality there are two PEIN sites, the Pla d’Espais d’Interès Natural: the Serra de Llaberia and Mare de Déu de la Roca itself. The Serra de Llaberia is also an Espai Natural Protegit and forms part of the Natura 2000 network both as a Special Area of Conservation and as a Special Protection Area: 10,350.40 hectares in all, of which 214.05 — 2.07% — fall inside Mont-roig del Camp. Between the hills and the coast lies the farmed landscape of Siurana PDO olives, almonds and carob trees, the same one Joan Miró painted during the summers he spent at the family farmhouse in the municipality. Having that above you is part of what the plot is worth, and the reason the bottom of the pool gets dirty: leaves, pollen and fine soil end up in the water every time the wind blows off the land.

The fourth thing is the household calendar, and here it weighs heaviest of all. With 66.8% of family dwellings outside main-residence use, a great many pools spend half the season with nobody in front of them: the house is shut up in September and opened again in June. A closed cover keeps the water covered, the bottom clean and access blocked for all of those months. With one safety warning we always repeat: the cover has no alarm and no obstacle sensors, it detects nothing and it does not stop on its own. Operate it with the pool in full view and nothing on top of it, and never pull the slats by hand.

And the fifth is winter, which here does not mean a pool shut away but a pool at rest: the water is left covered and the system ticking over, evaporation falls by 70% to 80%, the pool does not fill with leaves and chemical use drops by around 35%. What we do not do is winter tarpaulins or thermal blankets; nor walk-on covers, telescopic covers, domes or enclosures. Only automatic slatted covers, and since 2005.

With all of that, the choice of slat is not a matter of taste. The PVC slat suits the sheltered pools of the town and the inland part, and is made in four shades: white, beige, grey and blue. Solar polycarbonate uses the sun to stretch the season and adds 6 or 7 °C during the day at no running cost, in seven shades: blue, royal blue, platinum, green, smoke, royal black and royal grey. Transparent polycarbonate comes into its own on pools with a view, in three finishes: transparent, platinum and blue. We set it all out, with sections and weights, in slat types, and the roller systems in cover models.