Around 60 tourists suffer chlorine poisoning in hotel pool in Spain

Around 60 people were affected on Sunday at a hotel in the resort town of Benahavís on Spain's Costa del Sol, after showing signs of chemical poisoning while relaxing by the pool. According to the local newspaper Diario Sur, the incident was caused by a faulty automatic switch on the pump that feeds chlorine into the water.

The malfunction is believed to have released an excessive amount of disinfectant into the pool. Affected guests were treated either on-site at the hotel or taken by ambulance to hospital. Everyone who received the necessary medical care was later allowed to go home.

Hotel management closed off and sealed the pool area. New guests are simply being told that the pool zone is temporarily unavailable "for maintenance reasons," with no mention of the actual incident.

Hotel representatives have declined to comment to journalists, offering only a curt "no comment." Meanwhile, specialists from an accredited laboratory have taken samples of the pool water to determine exactly what went wrong.

Some of the affected guests are now considering legal action against the hotel. "Equipment maintenance is usually done in winter, not in summer during peak tourist season," one angry guest complained. Besides Spaniards, the hotel hosts foreign tourists, mainly from Portugal, France, Britain, Ukraine and Germany.

A similar incident occurred the day before on the outskirts of Rome, where eight people, including a five-year-old boy now fighting for his life in hospital, were poisoned by chlorine fumes. According to The Sun, around 20 people were in the pool when symptoms began to appear — seven of those affected were children under the age of ten. All complained of burning eyes and throat, coughing and difficulty breathing.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz