Spot Focus: Somo & Loredo
Alex Wade explores the region of northern Spain which is trying to reinvent itself as the European California.
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Imagine being given three million Euros to develop surfing in your beachside town. You could build a surf lodge; host international competitions; design a killer skate park; pay for signage for local surf schools and shops; and organise coaching for young rippers. And if your town happened to be a sun-kissed swell magnet, you could create a slice of California right here in Europe.
It sounds too good to be true but this is exactly what’s happening in northern Spain in the hitherto sleepy municipality of Ribamontán al Mar. After a lengthy tender process, the Spanish government granted the multi-million funding to develop surfing – and everything that goes with it – in the towns of Somo and Loredo on the Cantabrian coast.
The two places are just a carve board ride apart, and they abut a stunning two-mile stretch of pristine sand. The island of Santa Marina lies offshore at the Loredo end, and its point and reef set up is known as one of Spain’s best waves, serving up outsize right-handers which resident pro Pablo Gutierrez rates as “fantastic training for Hawaiian winters". At 30-years-old, Gutierrez knows his stuff. He's been a Rip Curl rider since 1994, was the first Spaniard to compete in the Pipe Masters and is a three-time European champion. So when he says that Cantabria is a top surf destination in its own right, it pays to listen.
The Spanish government were swayed by arguments advanced by Gutierrez and Ribamontán al Mar’s council officials just over a year ago, when they decided to make the unprecedented three million Euro grant. Acknowledging that Cantabria is something of a second-home haven with high unemployment (as is the case all over Spain), the intention behind the grant is to boost the economy and create jobs by popularising surfing. Already the scheme has paid dividends: Somo has seemingly innumerable surf shops, seven surf schools and a superb new skate park, which cost 250,000 Euros.
Over the next two years, a surfing centre will be built next to skate park on Somo’s beachfront, with showers, changing rooms and lockers, classrooms for video training and a judging area. A designated camping area for surfers will be created, young locals will be brought on by the likes of Gutierrez and there are plans to host international contests.
If there is still two years’ of funding to be done to realise the Somo surfing dream, the scene at the skate park – opened in June - is straight out of Venice Beach. It consists of a super-smooth bowl, a small half-pipe, a wave with an over-vert overhang called La Ola, a street course with various hips, lips and transitions, and a Burnside-style narrow vert-pillar. The standard is high, with skaters from the Basque and Asturias regions regularly shredding with Cantabrian locals like Alvaro, Chemo and the super-stylish Pablo Carranza. But it’s friendly too with overseas skaters welcome and there's always a crowd of both the cognoscenti or the curious on hand to watch the action.
When you consider that all Spanish surfing began in Cantabria way back in 1963, the fact that its modern-day metamorphosis should be happening in Somo and Loredo is especially fitting. More to the point, though, here’s hoping that other European governments and councils decide to emulate the Cantabrian example, and put some serious money into surfing.
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Spot Focus: Somo & Loredo (text) by Alex Wade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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