Portugal

The first surf explorers began their arrival in Portugal back in the ‘50’s, although the first person to ride a Portuguese wave on a surfboard is unknown. The first Portuguese surfers were Olympic pent-athlete António Jonet and the sailor Pedro Martins de Lima. Jonet returned from Hawaii in 1953 with a big old koa wood board and hit the waves of the Costa Caparica, just outside Lisbon, but by day two he’d accidentally smashed into a woman with his board and broken both her leg and the board. After that he never surfed again. There was little development through the ‘60’s, with only a handful of locals and the occasional passing foreigner taking up the Portuguese wave challenge. During this period there were no boards or other equipment available in Portugal and everything had to be begged off visiting foreign surfers. However, things were stirring in the rest of Europe, and the tentacles of surf culture were arriving with the first, truly exploratory surfaris through France, Spain and, finally, into Portugal. Despite a few tales of epic Portuguese waves leaking back to the masses waiting in Cornwall and France, it wasn’t really until Surfer magazine published a story on Portugal in 1976 that was accompanied by shots of giant waves at Guincho that foreign surfers really began to arrive in any number. They found a core of a dozen locals like Nuno Jonet and foreign regulars like Aussie shaper, Bruce Palmer who shaped in Wales and contributed vastly to local board building knowledge. By the time of Portugal’s first surf contest, in 1977 at Ribeira D’ilhas, Ericiera, Portuguese surfing was well established, with competitors arriving from Aveiro, Porto, Figuera da Foz and Lisbon. Organised (and won) by João Rocha, Nuno Jonet and Alberto Pais, they recouped the costs with Coca Cola sponsorship and the town of Ericeira actually threw the after comp party. The second contest, held at Peniche, attracted an international crowd like Al Hunt (ASP director) and was won by Bruce Palmer. Pretty soon Portugal became a standard stop for EPSA (European Professional Surfing Association), WQS (World Qualifying Series), ETB (European Tour of Bodyboarding), IBA (Bodyboarding World Tour) and, most prestigiously of all, for several years Portugal even hosted a WCT (World Championship Tour) event at Figueira da Foz. This was an interesting contest as it was the only world tour event not sponsored by one of the multinational surf corporations and instead was funded entirely by small local businesses. Unfortunately the event was plagued with bad surf almost every year and then received the final nail in its coffin when, in the aftermath of September 11th, just days before the event was scheduled to run, (and with the sponsoring companies having already forked out most of the huge amount of cash it costs to run a WCT event), the ASP dropped the event, along with the rest of the European leg of the tour.

Away from the contest scene, the Portuguese surf industry began to emerge in the late ‘70’s. The first commercially available boards were Lipsticks, shaped by Nick Urrichio and António Perira Caldas. When Nick left Lipstick behind he teamed up with Miguel Katzenstein and formed what is today the biggest board company in Portugal, Semente Surfboards. With the increasing ease at which surf products could be found in Portugal the lifestyle and the industry exploded in popularity.