The Spanish Government is facing renewed criticism for failing to increase Guardia Civil staffing in rapidly growing coastal municipalities, despite repeated warnings about population growth, rising workloads and increasingly complex criminal activity.
The shortage is especially acute in towns where permanent populations have expanded rapidly and the number of residents rises dramatically during the tourist season. Local Guardia Civil stations are expected to serve official populations that bear little resemblance to the number of people actually living in or visiting their districts.
Torrevieja provides one of the clearest examples. Its Guardia Civil station is regarded as one of the busiest in Spain, yet demands for a substantial and permanent increase in officers have gone largely unanswered for years.
Similar concerns have been repeatedly raised in neighbouring Orihuela Costa, where demands for a dedicated Guardia Civil post have also failed to produce a meaningful response from the Government.
Orihuela Costa has experienced extensive residential and commercial growth, while its population increases sharply during the summer. Nevertheless, the coast still lacks the permanent Guardia Civil presence that residents and community organisations have been requesting for years.
Campaigners argue that policing arrangements have not kept pace with the area’s development. They say a dedicated post would improve patrol coverage, shorten response times and provide residents with a local facility at which to report crimes and seek assistance.
The continuing failure to establish the proposed post has become another example of central government planning based on outdated population figures, rather than the number of people security services are required to protect.
Official figures show that 10,089 criminal offences were recorded in Torrevieja during 2025, an increase of 8.3% from the 9,316 cases registered in 2024.
Of the 2025 total, 9,067 were conventional offences and 1,022 involved cybercrime. The figures included one homicide, four attempted homicides, 150 assaults and public fights, one kidnapping and 87 offences against sexual freedom. Twenty-six of the latter were classified as sexual assaults involving penetration.
Property crime and fraud accounted for most of the recorded offences. There were 314 robberies involving violence or intimidation, 655 burglaries at homes, businesses and other premises, and 2,953 thefts.
The figures also included 101 vehicle thefts, 99 drug-trafficking offences and 895 online fraud cases.
Despite this considerable workload, central government staffing decisions continue to be based heavily on official census figures rather than the much larger population that security services must deal with throughout the year.
Torrevieja’s official population exceeds 100,400, while its municipal register contains approximately 113,000 residents. During the summer and other holiday periods, however, the number of people in the municipality rises substantially.
The city added more than 6,000 official residents during 2025, making it one of Spain’s fastest-growing municipalities. Yet the allocation of Guardia Civil officers and resources has failed to keep pace with that expansion.
Orihuela Costa faces the same imbalance. Its permanent population, large number of second homes and heavy flow of visitors create security demands that are not properly reflected by official statistics covering the municipality of Orihuela as a whole.
This is not simply a problem affecting two towns. Many tourist and coastal municipalities face the same difficulty: permanent security resources are calculated using population data that does not fully account for seasonal residents, second-home owners, unregistered inhabitants or millions of annual visitors.
The Ministry of the Interior has played down suggestions that higher recorded crime automatically means worsening public safety. Government representatives argue that increased reporting, particularly of cybercrime and sexual offences, contributes to the figures.
They also maintain that better detection and enforcement result in more offences appearing in official records. More active policing can therefore increase recorded crime even when it is helping to prevent other offences.
However, those explanations do not address the fundamental question of staffing. Increased reporting and more complex investigations place additional pressure on officers, regardless of whether the higher figures are caused by more crime, greater public awareness or improved detection.
The scale of the demand is particularly visible when Torrevieja is compared with much larger cities. It recorded 162 more offences than Elche during 2025, despite having only around 40% of Elche’s official population.
Torrevieja accounted for approximately 9.1% of all recorded crime in Alicante province. With 10,089 offences, it ranked second only to Alicante city, which registered 27,169. Elche recorded 9,927 offences, followed by Benidorm with 6,093 and Orihuela with 4,987.
Figures for the first quarter of 2026 showed a slight reduction in the overall total, with 2,008 offences compared with 2,101 during the same period of 2025.
Nevertheless, several serious categories increased. Two homicides and two attempted homicides were recorded, while assaults and public fights rose from 32 to 36.
Sexual offences remained at 22, but sexual assaults involving penetration increased from three to seven. Thefts rose from 519 to 531, vehicle thefts increased from 25 to 29 and online scams climbed by 14.5%, from 179 to 205.
The first-quarter figures do not include the summer period, when the coastal population and pressure on public services increase considerably. In 2025, offences recorded between January and March represented only 20.8% of the annual total.
Across Alicante province, 111,263 criminal offences were recorded in 2025, an increase of 6.3%. These included 91,257 conventional offences and 20,006 cybercrimes.
The continuing rise in population, tourism and online criminal activity demonstrates that security demands have changed significantly. Critics argue that the Government’s response has not.
Temporary summer reinforcements may provide limited relief, but they do not solve permanent shortages or reduce the year-round pressure on investigations, patrols and public assistance.
