Alleged: Surf Europe hates Spain!

Does Cornwall's favorite surf magazine really have beef with La Furia Roja?

“He who controls Surf Europe controls the world” (George Orwell, 1984).

As telescreen smartphone data strips nation-states of their power, multinationals like Amazon and Surf Europe Magazine are laughing all the way to the bank.

Or are they?

Evidence has surfaced, showing that despite what Surf Europe Mag has said of Spain’s ‘Costa de la Luz’, the place (occasionally) pumps.

Which begs the question: what’s in it for them?

The love-child of Honolua Bay and Lower Trestles, perhaps?

Let’s delve into this shit.

Like most European surf destinations, throughout summer Cadiz is as crook as Ando’s back leg. But come October the beach breaks are firing, and if you stick around long enough to need a 4/3 (and some form of gainful employment) you’ll be able to sample the point-breaks that enable tourist-hungry surf shops and cheesy postcard writers alike to call it “Cadizfornia”.

However, it seems Surf Europe (and The Inertia!) are—uncharacteristically—keeping this all under wraps.

“The Kingdom of Spain is denied an appreciable west coast by its neighbour Portugal. Thus coastal Spain is either the north-facing Biscay coast in the north, or the Med coasts of the east and south, or the surf battered lava strewn coasts of the Canary Islands, down near the tropics off NW Africa” (Surf Europe Mag).

Not even a mention of Cadizfornia. And all this from an article lamenting the lack of surf in the less terminally depressing parts of Spain:

“While most of the rest of the world thinks of Spain as a hot place where flamenco dancers and bull fighters drink sangria in ancient plazas flanked by ancient churches built in the Moorish style, for most surfers, huddled in campers vans watching the sets break in a tidal grey sea between the action of the windscreen wipers, the north coast reality is a much different affair.”

But sunny ol’ Cadiz is about as Spanish as you can get! From the week-long ferias of Jerez and Seville—where you can drink endless rebujitos and dance yourself into a blissful oblivion that restless guitars and wailing flamenco lets you construe as something life-enriching—to La Noche de San Juan, a fiesta that sees all the beaches in the region alight with millions of misplaced deliveries of Moroccan marijuana (and bonfires).

So what’s Surf Europe’s deal?

While it’s true that Portugal casts a swell shadow, when a big NW swell comes rolling outta the Atlantic—maxing out Hossegor, pulverising San Sebastian and rendering Mundaka and Coxos questionable for anyone that doesn’t have cojones of steel, Gaditanos (Cadizfornians) are suddenly the object of envy of their Superbock drinking, consistent-swell receiving neighbours.

And as the rest of the world book one-way tickets to Morocco, the staff at Surf Europe are off to the land of la siesta, to score sparsely-populated mid-arvo barrels.

Illuminati! Doublethink! Conspiracy!

If anyone ever tells you that “paddling out at a lacklustre yet accommodating beachie” in the north of Spain is the best you can ever hope for, then it’s time to go Alex Jones on their ass.

Let’s be honest: the best you can ever hope for from a ‘cultural’ surf trip is to catch the staff of Surf Europe sipping sangria and laughing evilly cliff-side at a pumping right-hander.

Obviously.