Who is the woman in red walking the length of the Costa del Sol?

When she finally stopped, a young girl asked her: "What is this?" On Malaga's Misericordia beach, already filled with umbrellas at eleven on Wednesday morning, a woman was walking along the sand. She could not go unnoticed: dressed in red from head to toe, with a bright frilly blouse and a GoPro camera on her chest.

Most people just followed her steps with a puzzled look on their faces and glanced at each other in surprise, but when she stopped, a circle of curious onlookers formed around her - wanting to know more. And c explained. "I'm doing a performance, which is like a work of art, but instead of painting or making a sculpture, it's done with your body, triggering something."

The Malaga-born creator and performer - winner of a Max award for Woman on a Treadmill on a Black Background - in her most recent role plays 'la bañista' (the bather): a woman in red who walks the shores of the Costa del Sol, from Manilva to Nerja. The sixth stage of her beach pilgrimage (on Wednesday this week) took her from the Torrequebrada Casino in Benalmádena to the city's Playa de la Misericordia: 20 kilometres of sand and rock that she covered between six in the morning and almost midday.

Three more days of walking lie ahead of her until she reaches the finish line in Nerja on Sunday. Her arrival at the Balcón de Europa will signal the end of the first part of her theatrical exhibition, entitled La Obra del Mar.

Beach performances run throughout August - produced by Dos Bengalas (herself and Violeta Niebla) and Fundación Teatral Antonio Banderas.

For a long time, García has been "very keen" to bring the living arts to one of the most popular and populous places in Malaga - its beaches. She wants to reclaim the civic and artistic use of public spaces. She had devised a theatrical work with spectators on benches on the sand while the plot unfolded in the water; but she ran up against bureaucracy difficulties and permits that were never going to arrive. So she decided to turn her idea on its head and bring performing arts to the beach in her own way, in keeping with the rules.

She walks in silence, deep in thought, "but with open ears". One woman asked another: "What is she wearing?" And she heard her reply: "Well, I don't know, she must be coming back from a night out." On a nudist beach, a girl said to her mother when she saw her appearing from behind a rock: "What is that?" "I don't know, honey," she replied. "And today a man said to me: 'Watch out a bull doesn't see you'," she said.

She wears red to be seen well. Like "the dot on Google Maps". But above all because of what it symbolises.

"It's the colour of fire, of emergency, of the question I'm asking myself: do you have to leave your city to be successful, do you want to leave Malaga?" This question sets the scene of her entire performance. Additionally, it is a colour closely related to femininity. "And for me it was important to be very present as a woman in the action," she stressed. "Red for periods, of course," said one of the young women who came to hear her explanation. "That's right, I'm a blood clot," Alessandra joked.

She said the experience has been "unforgettable". "It's going to mark a turning point in my life as a performance artist," she said. There are ten days of Peinar la Orilla (Combing the Shore) in which, at each stage, she stays in the homes of people who open their doors to her, feed her and talk to her about their relationship with the sea. She posts videos of these conversations every day on her Youtube channel: La Obra del Mar (The Work of the Sea). This section Peinar la Orilla is allowing her to see Malaga "from end to end, making the most of its uniqueness, to find out who we, and our visitors, truly are".

She is walking through heat, in pain. You can see a tan line when she pulls down her socks. "And yes, I've fallen a couple of times, my head hurts a little bit, my leg, my knee and all those things." But then she added: "I wouldn't change it for anything, it's really nice. I encourage people to go to the beach a lot more at dawn. It's an incredible spectacle, a luxury."

La Obra del Mar has only just begun. On 11 August she will cross the Mediterranean to Morocco's Al Hoceima beach to wave to whoever is opposite (in Nerja) in Hola Es Azul. On 17 August she will take the attitude of ignoring a mother's cry to "Get out of the water!" to the extreme by spending the whole day in the sea (in ¡Sal del Agua!).

On 23 August she will summon families to Playamar for Enterrar a MA-PA (Burying MA-PA). She has created a theatrical audio track called La Arena Quema (available for download on Bandcamp). She rounds off her performances with Orquesografía (from 19 to 22 August) and Verismo, Primer Movimiento (from 27 to 31 August). But before that, she will continue to comb the shore.