Europe’s strict ‘cover-up’ rules slap tourists with fines for wearing swimwear in the street

Brace yourself. I’ve got a budgie to smuggle.

As I’ve found out the hard way, Europeans like to think themselves sophisticated.

They had a couple of enlightenment figures write some books a few hundred years ago and now they’re all: “you can’t wipe your mouth with your hand” and “no wearing swimmers off the beach, you dirty convicts!”

Rude.

Anyway.

I’m here to argue the Dark Ages never left Europe.

While over here in Australia we have perfected beach attire, mainly with the invention of board shorts, over in Europe you have the bizarre contradiction of a culture that is both wildly comfortable with letting body parts hang out on the sand, while also – apparently – incredibly offended by bare flesh off of the beach.

And that’s before we get into the scourge of Euro male swimwear.

Unlike Australia, where we have perfect equilibrium, in Europe, in many places, you could be sunbathing pretty much starkers on the beach without a care in the world, but walk up onto the promenade to grab an ice-cream, or sit down at a beachside cafe in your bikini (or in board shorts without a T-shirt) and suddenly you’re – so we’re led to believe – a public menace.

All over Europe, Old World towns are reportedly furious about tourists breaking some unspoken street dress code when visiting the beach.

In fact, in many places, it’s not unspoken anymore.

A couple of years ago, the Mayor of Sorrento, Massimo Coppola, introduced a 500 euro ($800 AUD) fine for walking around and showing bare flesh, which he said contributed to “widespread indecorous behavior” and damaged the town’s reputation.

Now many cities, from Sicily, Sorrento and Barcelona, have introduced similar “cover up” rules.

It’s even spread as far as Croatia, with Sail Croatia revelers heading to Dubrovnik recently warned to cover up or risk getting fined there too.

Traveller Isabella Lakin recently took to TikTok to warn other globetrotters “do not wear your bikini top when you leave the beach without something over it. They will get you. They don’t want tourists doing that.”

“If you’re doing Sail Croatia and you think you can just scoot through town with a bikini top, I wouldn’t recommend it. I know a few people that got stung pretty badly last year … and it was mostly people on Sail Croatia who forgot the rules.”

Though I’m generally in favor of adapting to your environment, I’m suspicious of these bans.

Why?

Although I was once politely asked to leave a French supermarket (in the beach town of Hossegor) by security for walking in barefoot, after almost three years living in Spain, I never once felt judged for walking off the beach shirtless (people were generally more shocked by my bare-feet).

I also never saw anyone complain about tourists wearing bikinis in the street or urinating in the ocean.

To me, it seems like European politicians in overcrowded hotspots are trying to shift the blame from their poor governance onto tourists, directing frustration from residents that should be directed at them, somewhere else.

The real erosion of reputation in these cities and towns (especially the bigger ones like Barcelona), I reckon, is not tourists briefly striding across a plaza to get back to their hotel in their swimmers, it’s the McDonald’s around the corner, the Starbucks up the road, the nightclub beneath their feet, the increasingly unaffordable rental prices for residents.

When you get to the point of having to police the minutiae of behavior like banning thongs (as Cinque Terre has done) and boob tube tops and football shirts (as a restaurant group did in Mallorca) and urinating in the ocean (as happened in the Costa del Sol) you’ve got to start wondering if there is actually a deeper problem at play and whether officials are just trying to capitalize on the headwinds of Europe quiet quitting its relationship with tourists and shift the blame from their poor tourism management.

Rather than fine some hungover Contiki backpacker for forgetting to pack a shawl to the beach, why not focus on fixing the things your residents are actually affected by?

If you did that, these minor grievances probably wouldn’t rankle so much.

Tourists dressing scantily is more the straw that breaks the camel’s back: the hay bale is the sheer numbers of them (and the change in the social fabric of a town that comes with that).

And as for the clothes: I reckon a bit of side-eye from a local is the best deterrent there is against inappropriate dressing. Banning something in writing generally leads to people wanting to do it more. Just allow shaming to take its natural course, and don’t give tourists something to rebel against.

Love from, a pesky tourist …

This article originally appeared on Escape and has been republished with permission