Since November 2025, Playa Dominical has been under a constitutional court order to clear unpermitted stands from its public beach zone. In August 2026 that court went further and found Osa's mayor in disobedience of the order. A September 29 report from Guananoticias described the stands as still operating, and no account since then has said otherwise.
Most coverage treats this as a story about will, meaning whether the municipality wants to act. In the court file, Osa has repeatedly said that the only tools it has are taking down a structure and clearing a sector, and it says that costs a vendor about one day of sales. If that is accurate, the stands are behaving exactly the way the system lets them. Repeated removals alone have not kept the public zone clear, and none of the orders so far has given the municipality new enforcement powers.
The strip of sand the law reserves for everyone
The rule behind all of this is the first 50 meters of the coast. Under Costa Rica's Ley sobre la Zona Marítimo Terrestre, Ley 6043, Article 10 defines the public zone as the 50-meter strip measured from the ordinary high-tide line, together with the areas left exposed at low tide. Article 12 prohibits building, fencing, setting up installations, or carrying on any other activity or occupation there without legal authorization. Article 20 dedicates the public zone to public use, and to free pedestrian passage in particular, subject to the law's exceptions.
The beach itself runs about four kilometers, according to Guananoticias. The dispute covers far less of it. When the municipality inspected on February 20, 2026, it counted about 30 commercial stands along a 300-meter section, as reported by The Tico Times. So the conflict sits on roughly one-thirteenth of the shoreline. It is also the busiest stretch, where formally registered businesses and the public both say space is being blocked.
Nine years of clearing the same stretch
The court case did not start the enforcement. It brought attention to a cycle the municipality had already been running for years. These dates come from the Sala Constitucional's November 2025 ruling and from press accounts of 2026.
| Date | What happened | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 21–22, 2017 | Municipal removals in Playa Dominical's maritime zone | Sala IV ruling |
| May 18, 2023 | Removals for occupation, sales and unauthorized construction | Sala IV ruling |
| June 2023 | Municipal notices recorded occupants back in the public zone | Sala IV ruling |
| Apr 4, 2024 | Municipal report on removals and notifications in Dominical | Sala IV ruling |
| Feb 26, 2025 | Commercial activity found again in the zone | Sala IV ruling |
| May 19, 2025 | Local committee files written complaint with Osa's ZMT department | Sala IV ruling |
| Nov 14, 2025 | Sala IV rules, gives the municipality four months | Sala IV ruling, Tico Times |
| Mar 6, 2026 | Structures and ropes removed, beach cleaned, 19 signs installed | Tico Times |
| Mar 14, 2026 | Four-month deadline passes | Tico Times |
| May 13, 2026 | Operation with the Tourist Police | Tico Times |
| Aug 13–14, 2026 | Operation; people reportedly return the next day | Tico Times, Guananoticias |
| Aug 18, 2026 | Court grants disobedience complaint against the mayor | CRC 891, Guananoticias |
The 2023 and 2026 rows tell the story together. After the May 2023 removal, the municipality's own correspondence noted occupants back in the public zone by June. After the August 13, 2026 operation, Guananoticias reported they were back within 24 hours. Removals have become more frequent, and the time it takes the stands to return has shrunk from weeks to a single day.
What the municipality told the court about its own limits
The best explanation of the cycle comes from the municipality's sworn report to the Sala Constitucional in September 2025, which appears in the published ruling. It made three points.
- Staffing. The Zona Marítimo Terrestre department had two appointed inspectors. They are responsible for more than 221 linear kilometers of maritime zone across Osa's coastline and estuaries.
- Powers. In the municipality's reading, the law lets local governments remove occupants and demolish structures. It does not give them clear authority to watch the public zone continuously or to seize merchandise.
- Consequence. In the municipality's words, a removal costs the vendor only the sales of the day it happens, and the same people try to set up in the same spots days or weeks later.
Those three points account for the pattern in the table above. A vendor who loses one day of sales and keeps the inventory can treat an operation as a predictable cost of doing business. Two inspectors cannot stand guard over one 300-meter stretch while also covering another 220 kilometers.
The municipality's answer was to move the matter into criminal court. It told the Sala it had coordinated with the Fiscalía Ambiental to open criminal case 24-000013-1111-PE. It also said it had been sending reports on individuals and activity to environmental prosecutors, with inspections in January 2024 and March 2025, and was waiting for a judicial outcome that would discourage repeat occupation more effectively. In September 2025 the mayor's office also formally asked the Ministerio de Seguridad Pública, the Ministerio de Salud, the environment ministry and the Fiscalía Ambiental to coordinate joint operations.
The complainants answered in the same file. Their position was that Ley 6043 already requires municipalities to appoint the inspectors they need, and that criminal complaints are within the municipality's reach. They argued that if goods were seized through a criminal process, the judge would hold them in custody, which would remove the economic incentive to return. Everyone in the case agrees that removal alone does not last. Where they differ is on who has to supply the missing tool.
Why the court's August order raised the stakes but not the toolkit
The court case grew out of the May 2025 complaint that the Comité de Comerciantes y Ciudadanos Pro Defensa Playa Dominical, a group of local businesses and residents, filed with the municipality. Attorney Karl Villalobos Hoffmann then filed the amparo on behalf of Dominical neighbors, as La Nación reported. In November 2025 the court found that the municipality had carried out removals but had not resolved the problem for good, and it gave Osa four months to act.
When those four months passed, the complainants went back to court. On August 18, 2026, the Sala issued Resolution 2026031398. It ordered Mayor Mainor Anchía Angulo and Daniela López Rivera, acting head of the ZMT department, to comply with the 2025 ruling, and it warned that the case could go to prosecutors if compliance continued to fall short, according to CRC 891. Speaking to Guananoticias, Villalobos Hoffmann called it what he believed to be "the first case of a mayor condemned for disobedience in the Sala Constitucional."
The order puts more pressure on the officials responsible. It does not give them any power they lacked before. The municipality told the court it was preparing a larger operation with the Fuerza Pública, the Policía de Migración, SINAC, environmental prosecutors and the Ministerio de Salud. That combination fits the municipality's own diagnosis, because it brings in agencies with powers the ZMT department does not have. When The Tico Times published on August 20, no date had been announced. The September 29 Guananoticias report, the latest public account, described the zone as still occupied and did not mention any joint operation taking place.
The two sides also describe the vendors differently. The municipality has called them small local artisans. Guananoticias disputes that, citing public registry records. Both views are now part of the public record of a case that remains open.
What would actually change the picture on the sand
The cycle described above points to three things that would end it. Each one is a change in tools, and none depends on a single cleanup.
- A joint operation involving agencies that can do more than remove structures. This is the interagency effort the municipality has described since September 2025 and confirmed again in August 2026.
- An outcome in criminal case 24-000013-1111-PE. The municipality has said it is waiting on this case for consequences that would discourage vendors from returning.
- More inspection capacity in the ZMT department. That means more than two inspectors for 221 kilometers of coast.
Until one of those things happens, the 19 signs installed on March 6 will keep marking a rule that the current enforcement can only uphold for a day at a time.
This post is general information about a public court case and the law it cites, and it is not legal advice. Anyone with a question about their own coastal property should take it to a qualified Costa Rican attorney.
When you are weighing a property near the shore anywhere in the Southern Zone, it helps to know how the maritime zone actually works on the ground, beyond what the statute says. The team at Engel & Völkers Costa Rica follows these local cases closely. Connect with our Sámara shop to talk through how coastal rules shape the homes you are considering, or how they affect a listing you plan to bring to market.
