No one splashes in them anymore: the more than 40 abandoned water parks in Spain

It was exactly 40 years ago . In June 1985, with Felipe González at the helm of the government, Spain signed the treaty of accession to the European Economic Community . It was the starting gun for a period of economic transformation marked by growth, job creation, and increased general well-being. Everything pointed to a bright and promising future , full of progress and advancement.

That same year, Aqualandia opened in Benidorm, Spain's first water park and already one of the largest in the world. A symbol of those times when prosperity seemed unstoppable and perpetual. But while we splashed happily in the wave pools and giggled down the water slides, desertification was advancing . Today, 75% of Spain is at serious risk of becoming a wasteland.

In the four decades since 1985, it is estimated that a total of 230 water parks have been built in Spain. That is at least the figure that, in the absence of official data, Leonor Martín Taibo and Aida Navarro Redón , two architects who have spent years researching and documenting the water parks built on the Iberian Peninsula, especially those that have closed and are in a state of disrepair, come up with. According to their calculations, one in five water parks has ended up closing.

Leonor and Aida met while studying for their master's degree at the Madrid School of Architecture and were immediately united by their interest in abandoned spaces. In 2019, they began working together on Fin de Temporada , a research project they completed in 2023. It takes the form of a video essay, halfway between a documentary and an artistic piece, which explores several of the 41 abandoned water parks in Spain and Portugal while reflecting on these ruins and the environmental consequences of this type of leisure model. The project is completed with a publication that includes interviews with experts, photographs, and plans for the 41 closed water parks. Fin de Temporada has received several awards and recognitions, including being a finalist in the latest edition of arquia/próxima , the Arquia Foundation competition that supports Spanish and Portuguese architects in their first ten years of practice.

The ruins of abandoned water parks have their appeal, it's undeniable, and social media is filled with videos of people sneaking into these disturbing, spectral enclosures . These are ghostly places, in the middle of nowhere, that stand like archaeological remnants of an era: blue pools full of chips, slides leading to nowhere, rickety umbrella poles, graffiti, silence where there was once bustle, and frogs diving into small pools of dirty water that were once crystal-clear lakes smelling of chlorine. Nature has been reclaiming spaces and turning these facilities into decaying ruins.

“These ruins have an aesthetic appeal ,” Leonor Martín tells us. “Just as we enjoy Greek and Roman ruins because they speak to us of a past, of the history of a place, abandoned water parks also remind us of a time and a generation,” she points out.

But these places also provide the perfect setting for discussing water scarcity , and "Finding the Season" does just that. The documentary echoes the dire prediction of the World Resources Institute, which predicts that by 2040, Spain will be the only country in the European Union, along with Greece, to suffer from extreme water poverty due to the overexploitation of its resources. It also highlights how, in 2020 , water rights began to be listed on Wall Street , allowing speculation about the transfer of rights to an essential asset for life. "That same year, 2020, the prediction of the World Water Institute came true: Annual demand for water in cities in developing countries increased by a volume equivalent to the annual flow of seven Nile rivers ," the video adds.

Given all this data, Leonor Martín and Aida Navarro's estimates of water consumption at the 41 abandoned water parks are shocking: 720 liters per minute to fill 145,000 cubic meters that flowed through half a kilometer of slides, lanes, and pipes. Around 5,000 people passed through these 41 now-residential leisure centers every day, generating about 1,200 kilos of garbage per day .

But no, it wasn't climate change , the increasingly pressing water shortage , or the unstoppable advance of desertification that put an end to those 41 water parks. "No, they haven't closed due to water shortages, but primarily due to economic reasons ," emphasizes Leonor Martín. After all, these are seasonal businesses that operate for only three months a year , whose infrastructure is expensive to maintain, and which were hit hard by both the 2008 crisis and the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown. Not to mention the fact that many of these parks haven't withstood the fierce competition from larger, newer, more sophisticated, and more fashionable parks, because water parks continue to open . "Since we finished the End of Season in 2023, a new water park has opened in Asturias, and there are projects to develop them in Guadalajara, Valladolid, Cáceres, Cantabria, Zamora, Badajoz, and the Canary Islands," reveals Leonor Martín.

Today, the vast majority of water parks practice responsible water management. “I think it's absolutely absurd to open a water park on the coast when you have the beach right next door. But I'm from Madrid, and in Madrid, either they build a pool or a water park in the summer or you die. Those of us who live in arid land need those places ,” he emphasizes.

The big problem is what to do with those 41 abandoned water parks. "It's difficult to give them a second life ; they involve very specific infrastructure. It's not like a hotel, which if it closes can be converted into a residential building or given another use," says Leonor Martín. Added to this is the fact that the land on which water parks are built is usually designated for leisure activities, so they cannot be used for anything other than recreation. In Sitges and the Canary Islands, some water parks have been converted into multi-adventure and paintball areas. But in the vast majority of cases, those that closed remain abandoned. The aggravating factor is that their extremely long slides are made of fiberglass, a material that is very difficult to recycle.

To prevent the continued accumulation of ruins from abandoned water parks, Leonor Martín and Aida Navarro are conducting a detailed scientific study of all existing facilities of this type in our country. "This way, when the next developer applies for a license to open a new water park, the city council in question will have data to assess whether it makes sense to open it or not. Architecture leaves a terrible mark; you have to think before you build. And even more so when it comes to a structure as complex as a water park," she concludes.