Flamenco Beach — beach
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Flamenco Beach

  • 2 min read
  • 18.328° N 65.316° W

Interesting facts

  • In 1971 protesters led by Rubén Berríos, head of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, occupied the Navy's target zone at Flamenco Beach and stayed for weeks.
  • Berríos and 13 other demonstrators were arrested for trespassing on military property and sentenced to three months in prison.
  • During the protests a Catholic bishop, a Baptist minister and a Quaker activist led the building of an ecumenical chapel directly on the beach.
  • In 1970 Culebra's mayor travelled to Washington and persuaded the law firm Covington & Burling to take the islanders' case against the Navy free of charge.
  • Following decisions by Presidents Nixon and Ford, all military operations on Culebra ended in December 1975, and the exercises moved to neighbouring Vieques until 2003.
  • Culebra and Vieques together formed the Inner Range of the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range, used to rehearse amphibious landings and naval gunfire support.
  • The laurel cross on Culebra's coat of arms commemorates the islanders' civic victory in getting the United States Navy to leave.
  • A plaque honouring the anti-Navy protests was commissioned in 2019 to be displayed on Flamenco Beach itself.
  • The neighbouring wildlife refuge goes back to 1909, when President Theodore Roosevelt set aside parts of Culebra as a reserve by executive order.
  • TripAdvisor travellers voted Flamenco the third best beach in the world in 2014, and Forbes placed it 19th among the world's top 50 beaches in 2017.

Why it is worth it

A mile of pale sand curves around a horseshoe-shaped bay on the northwestern shore of Culebra, a small island municipality off the east coast of Puerto Rico. A reef lies roughly a quarter of a mile out, so the Atlantic swell breaks offshore and the water inside the bay stays shallow, clear and an intense turquoise. Behind the beach lies Flamenco Lagoon, which lent the place its name: Caribbean flamingos were once a common sight there.

The beach is edged by the Culebra National Wildlife Refuge, one of the oldest wildlife preserves in the United States. Parrotfish, blue tangs and several kinds of wrasse move over the sandy shallows, and ghost crabs work the shoreline. Each summer some 50,000 seabirds, most of them sooty terns, come to nest on the Flamenco Peninsula and feed over the bay before leaving with their young in early autumn. Culebra's beaches are also a breeding ground for leatherback and hawksbill sea turtles, while green turtles graze the nearby seagrass beds. Flamenco regained its Blue Flag status in 2016.

The calm of the place has a stranger history. In 1902 the United States Navy took over land around Culebra's harbour, and from 1939 the archipelago served as a gunnery and bombing range, with the area west of the beach and Flamenco Point used for joint Navy and Marine Corps exercises. Islanders began protesting in 1971, and the military left in 1975. Two M4 Sherman tanks used for target practice were left behind on the sand; corroded by salt air and layered with graffiti, they have become an unlikely emblem of the beach. Culebra itself, part of the Spanish Virgin Islands, was first settled in the 1880s under the name San Ildefonso de la Culebra; its main town, Dewey, grew up on Playa Sardinas after the Navy displaced the earlier settlers.

Getting there

The beach lies about 3 km from Dewey, Culebra's town. Benjamín Rivera Noriega Airport (CPX) on Culebra is about 2 km away and has small-aircraft links with San Juan and Ceiba; Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (SJU) in San Juan is about 73 km away in a straight line. The Culebra ferry sails from Ceiba on the Puerto Rican mainland, roughly 36 km across the water; Fajardo, the nearest mainland city, is a similar distance away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in the United States 30The Most Beautiful Beaches 49The Most Beautiful Water Wonders 429

From the encyclopaedia

Flamenco Beach is a public beach on an open bay connected to the North Atlantic Ocean in northwestern Culebra, an island-municipality of Puerto Rico, part of the Spanish Virgin Islands in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the West Indies of the Caribbean. Situated in front of Flamenco Lagoon and stretching for about 1 mile (1.6 km) around the reef-sheltered, horseshoe-shaped Flamenco Bay, the beach is known for its shallow, calm turquoise waters and white sand, as well as its species-rich swimming areas and diving sites. Accessible by plane or boat from Puerto Rico, it is a popular destination for domestic and foreign visitors, ranking 3rd best beach in the world with a TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Award in 2013, and regaining its Blue Flag Beach international distinction in 2016.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

18.32801, -65.31627per Wikidata