Last Friday (16), judge Alexandre Moraes da Rosa, from the Court of Justice of Santa Catarina, granted an injunction to the Brazilian Federation of Naturism, guaranteeing, through “collective safe conduct”, the right of naturists to remain naked on Pinho beach, in Balneário Camboriú, on the strip of sand and sea without threat of arrest. The measure is another chapter in the soap opera that has been unfolding since 2022, which culminated in the removal of permission by the management of Mayor Juliana Pavan (PSD) for the practice on what is the first naturist beach in Brazil.
With the injunction, which is a provisional decision still to be evaluated by the court’s panel, a bizarre situation was created: the city hall can say that there is no longer a naturist beach, but it cannot prohibit —let alone arrest, as has happened recently— anyone who is enjoying their sun as they came into the world.
The judge’s decision determines “that the enforcement authorities refrain from imputing those who go to Pinho beach for committing the crime of an obscene act (art. 233 of the Penal Code) for the simple fact that they are naked on the strip of sand.”
The pendenga, according to the president of the Brazilian Federation of Naturism, Paula Silveira, “has real estate interests behind it, remembering that Balneário Camboriú currently has the most expensive square meter in the country”. The problem, she points out, is that the area where Pinho beach is located is an APP (Permanent Protection Area), which would require a complete legal change to be occupied by another enterprise of those that today, in the rest of the municipality, no longer have anywhere to set up shop.
Following the conservative line of the state, with only one PT member among the 19 councilors elected in 2024, the Municipal Council of Balneário Camboriú has invoked, to ban naturism from the place, the argument that acts of, let’s say, obscenity and naughtiness of couples had been caught along the trail that goes from the road to the beach, a small stretch of approximately 500 meters. Which is a fact, without a doubt, more than publicized in liberal circles, but which, if detected in public, constitutes the crime of an obscene act.
But it is important to remember that naturism, as an international movement, is almost like scouting without a handkerchief. Their rules of behavior are strict and vehemently exclude the practice of libidinous acts or any type of harassment in their areas, frequented by entire families that Paula estimates currently number around 3,000 people in the country. If one or the other does not respect them, the problem becomes the police. But the Penal Code is not enough for the local authorities.
The federation, says Paula, has been trying for years to convince local authorities to increase supervision, including the use of cameras on the trail — where the mess is concentrated, and which bothers the naturists themselves. “The city hall always responds that it doesn’t have the manpower to monitor it,” she says, “but it has the capacity to block us and arrest us.”
If naturists, until the court decides otherwise, cannot be arrested or prevented from being naked on the beach (and only there), the city council, through its advisors, told the column that it will “adopt other measures, such as providing guidance and informing that there is no longer a naturism area”. When asked whether it would not be easier to monitor to curb excesses instead of simply banning a practice that has been carried out on site for more than four decades, the management simply responded that it will adopt “all applicable legal measures to reverse the effects [da liminar]through appropriate procedural instruments”.
The management also denied that it was planning any urban intervention for the area and said it had no record of any request for the construction or implementation of a project on the site.
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