Automatic pool covers in Motril

Motril has 1,474 pools on the Catastro register

According to the Catastro, the Spanish property register, there are 1,474 open-air pools recorded in Motril, 112 more than in 2022. That is around 3.6% of the 40,956 the Catastro counts across the 174 municipalities of the province of Granada, a provincial stock that has added 3,278 shells over the same period, a rise of 8.7%. Motril has grown by 8.2%, a little below the provincial average: the pool is no recent fashion here — it was already in place.

That count measures shells, not use: the Catastro records the pool and does not look at how many days a year anybody swims in it. The figure has to be read as a guaranteed minimum, never as an exact total, and for three reasons. The first is that the register runs behind reality and leaves out undeclared shells. The second is that it lumps together the pool of a villa out on the vega, the pool of a block of flats, the pool of a hotel in Playa Granada and the pool of a club. And the third is that it does not go below municipality level: there is no breakdown between the town centre, Santa Adela, Playa Granada, Carchuna and Calahonda.

That is why you will not see figures by development or by village here: the Catastro does not publish them, and we would rather not invent them. If you want the context for the whole province, it is on the pool covers in Granada page.

Salt, subtropical sun and dust off the vega: what Motril asks of a cover

Motril lives right up against the sea, with a working commercial and fishing port on its doorstep. That means air laden with salt over the pools of El Varadero, Santa Adela, Playa Granada, Carchuna and Calahonda for much of the year, and salt is unforgiving with ordinary fixings. Which is why our whole structure, the shafts and the fittings are AISI 316L stainless steel, the molybdenum-bearing grade used in marine environments, and we neither change material from one area to the next nor offer stripped-down versions.

The sun asks much the same of the slat. The Costa Tropical has around 320 days of sunshine a year, mild winters and temperatures that rarely drop below 12 °C, and all that radiation falls straight onto the south-facing terraces of Playa Granada and the stepped plots of Minasierra. A badly chosen slat fades and turns brittle within a few summers. We work with profiles stabilised against ultraviolet light, and we study the real orientation of each shell before recommending a finish and a colour.

The third thing that marks Motril out is the vega. The Guadalfeo leaves behind a fertile plain of cherimoya, avocado and mango — on the same terraces where sugar cane was grown for centuries — and the flat land at Carchuna is given over to greenhouses. When the wind turns inland, all of that ends up in the water: fine dust, leaves off the subtropical trees and material washed down off the vega. With the cover closed that dirt stays on top, the bottom stays clean and the filter works far less hard. Add to that a figure that counts for a lot on the Costa Tropical: the cover holds back between 70% and 80% of evaporation and cuts the consumption of chemical product by around 35%.

And then there is safety, which is what families and residents' associations ask about most. Closed, the mat of rigid slats rests on the coping stone and is a real physical barrier against a fall, not merely a saving on cleaning. The slats float on the water, with no rails and no guides inside the shell, so there is nothing to rub against and nothing to clean on the bottom.

With that climate, choosing the slat in Motril is not a question of taste. Opaque PVC suits the pools out on the vega and the more sheltered ones, because it insulates and shuts the pool away; solar polycarbonate makes use of those clear days to gain temperature and stretch the season; and transparent is the one chosen in Playa Granada when the pool is seen from the living room and nobody wants to block the view out to sea. We explain all of it, with sections and weights, on our slat types page, and the shaft systems on cover models.