The mayoress of Mijas, Ana Mata (PP), reported on Tuesday 17th that the Spanish government has not allocated the funds that the Town Hall unanimously requested in September 2025 to combat the Asian seaweed plague on the municipality’s coastline and the Costa del Sol. The mayoress lamented that, by contrast, the State will allocate one million euros to the Caribbean Sea for the effective management of sargassum, another invasive species of seaweed in America.

The government team explained that this was confirmed in a report published by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in November 2025, “just two months after the municipal plenary session requested a state fund to tackle the growing threat of Asian seaweed in Mijas”. “We have no record of such a fund being created to date”, said the mayoress. 

 

According to the Executive, official information regarding the AECID’s contribution to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) “for the effective management and sustainable use of sargassum in Latin America and the Caribbean” can be found on the AECID website. “We have no news of  funds for Mijas, but we do for the Caribbean”, the mayoress lamented.

Beach cleaning

In 2024 and 2025, the Mijas Town Hall allocated a total of 1.2 million euros of municipalfunds to cleaning Asian seaweed from the beaches. Specifically, in 2025 alone, more than 2,600 tonnes were removed from the coastline, according to data provided on Tuesday 17th by the Beaches Department, and this amount is expected to increase considerably in 2026.

 

The mayoress recalled that this problem is not new, as in 2022 the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) urged the Spanish Government to implement a national plan to help coastal municipalities deal with the invasion of Asian seaweed and, specifically, to provide financial support for the additional costs they face.

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