and Vera Luz. These are not super-swanky developments. They look like the condos you might find in small beach communities like Carpinteria and Encinitas on the California coast. Which is not to say they’re not nice. They look perfectly fine.
The best part about living in an urbanización is you can walk from your condo, along pedestrian pathways, to the beach and back without wearing any clothes. That you can stop at a grocery store or a bar or a restaurant without getting dressed just adds to the appeal. No shirt, no shoes, no pants, no nothing. Where you keep your wallet is a bit of a conundrum, and I hadn’t seen anyone wearing a fanny pack.
Unlike other nudist and naturist resorts, Vera Playa isn’t hidden behind walls or locked behind gates. The beach and the pathways are open to anyone who wants to drop trou and air his or her genitals. It’s an audacious concept. Creating a clothing-optional neighborhood? A place that’s open to the public? Why?
I should note that my use of the phrase “clothing optional” annoys naturists. For them, it’s either naturist or textile, with no in-between. Which is fine in theory, but in practice people seem to wear whatever makes them comfortable. On the beach and in the urbanizaciónes I saw as many people wearing swimsuits or shorts as people who were totally nude.
I contacted Bob Tarr, an ardent naturist, a civic-boosting resident of one of the urbanizaciónes , and the webmaster of the informative site veraplaya.info , and asked him who lived in these complexes. Tarr replied, “Most of the homes here (80% or so) are Spanish owned and with relatively few exceptions they are used for the July/August summer holidays and occasionally during the rest of the year mainly at bank holiday periods.” Bob’s numbers seem to correspond with the data from the tourist bureau, so maybe using the convent information booth as a metric wasn’t such a strange idea after all. Bob wasn’t going to be in Vera Playa when I was; he said it was “a bit too hot and a lot too busy” that time of year. Which surprised me because it was early July, the weather was pleasant, and it wasn’t particularly crowded.
With almost 80 percent of the owners not around all year, who rents the apartments in the urbanizaciónes ? Bob told me that occasionally non-naturists will take advantage of the relatively low rents on these vacation homes, and that has become, as he said, “a bit of a thorny issue.”
I wanted to get an idea of how the locals felt about this mix of “textile” and “naturist,” so I arranged an interview with José Carmelo Jorge Blanco, the mayor of Vera. If anyone would know about thorny issues or how the locals felt about their beaches being overrun by naked people, he would.
The center of Vera is eight kilometers from Vera Playa. I left the hotel and drove around, basically getting lost, until a friendly bicyclist pointed me in the right direction and I found myself in Vera. After I wound my way through tiny one-way streets near the city center—my rented Fiat proving to be excellent at maneuvering through the narrow alleys—I turned up in the Plaza Mayor at the tourism office, where a woman named Pilar Guerra was waiting for me. Pilar is tall and attractive and reminded me of a slightly frazzled character from one of Pedro Almodóvar’s early films. That she made herself even taller by wearing three-inch platform sandals only added to her charm. She was relieved I spoke Spanish, she said, because her English was “not good,” and I was alarmed that she thought I spoke Spanish. Because I don’t really speak Spanish, I speak a kind of Los Angeles pidgin Spanglish . But it didn’t seem to bother Pilar, who just shrugged and said, “We don’t get a lot of opportunities to speak English anymore here.”
We decided we would muddle through together. The mayor spoke fluent German, which is admirable, but wasn’t much help.
José Carmelo Jorge Blanco is an extremely
The best part about living in an urbanización is you can walk from your condo, along pedestrian pathways, to the beach and back without wearing any clothes. That you can stop at a grocery store or a bar or a restaurant without getting dressed just adds to the appeal. No shirt, no shoes, no pants, no nothing. Where you keep your wallet is a bit of a conundrum, and I hadn’t seen anyone wearing a fanny pack.
Unlike other nudist and naturist resorts, Vera Playa isn’t hidden behind walls or locked behind gates. The beach and the pathways are open to anyone who wants to drop trou and air his or her genitals. It’s an audacious concept. Creating a clothing-optional neighborhood? A place that’s open to the public? Why?
I should note that my use of the phrase “clothing optional” annoys naturists. For them, it’s either naturist or textile, with no in-between. Which is fine in theory, but in practice people seem to wear whatever makes them comfortable. On the beach and in the urbanizaciónes I saw as many people wearing swimsuits or shorts as people who were totally nude.
I contacted Bob Tarr, an ardent naturist, a civic-boosting resident of one of the urbanizaciónes , and the webmaster of the informative site veraplaya.info , and asked him who lived in these complexes. Tarr replied, “Most of the homes here (80% or so) are Spanish owned and with relatively few exceptions they are used for the July/August summer holidays and occasionally during the rest of the year mainly at bank holiday periods.” Bob’s numbers seem to correspond with the data from the tourist bureau, so maybe using the convent information booth as a metric wasn’t such a strange idea after all. Bob wasn’t going to be in Vera Playa when I was; he said it was “a bit too hot and a lot too busy” that time of year. Which surprised me because it was early July, the weather was pleasant, and it wasn’t particularly crowded.
With almost 80 percent of the owners not around all year, who rents the apartments in the urbanizaciónes ? Bob told me that occasionally non-naturists will take advantage of the relatively low rents on these vacation homes, and that has become, as he said, “a bit of a thorny issue.”
I wanted to get an idea of how the locals felt about this mix of “textile” and “naturist,” so I arranged an interview with José Carmelo Jorge Blanco, the mayor of Vera. If anyone would know about thorny issues or how the locals felt about their beaches being overrun by naked people, he would.
The center of Vera is eight kilometers from Vera Playa. I left the hotel and drove around, basically getting lost, until a friendly bicyclist pointed me in the right direction and I found myself in Vera. After I wound my way through tiny one-way streets near the city center—my rented Fiat proving to be excellent at maneuvering through the narrow alleys—I turned up in the Plaza Mayor at the tourism office, where a woman named Pilar Guerra was waiting for me. Pilar is tall and attractive and reminded me of a slightly frazzled character from one of Pedro Almodóvar’s early films. That she made herself even taller by wearing three-inch platform sandals only added to her charm. She was relieved I spoke Spanish, she said, because her English was “not good,” and I was alarmed that she thought I spoke Spanish. Because I don’t really speak Spanish, I speak a kind of Los Angeles pidgin Spanglish . But it didn’t seem to bother Pilar, who just shrugged and said, “We don’t get a lot of opportunities to speak English anymore here.”
We decided we would muddle through together. The mayor spoke fluent German, which is admirable, but wasn’t much help.
José Carmelo Jorge Blanco is an extremely
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