History
There are various hypothesis' about who was the first person to introduce surfing to Europe, and after a little research we found out that Ignacio Arana, the Spanish Consul in Hawaii, was the first man to bring two surfboards and the first surf book to the Basque Country in 1914.
In the 50´s Peter Viertel, film director, writer, screenwriter and husband of Hollywood actress Deborah Kerr, he was the pioneer of modern surfing in Euskadi. Seeing a man on a “flow table” gliding through the waves was a social event that shocked all, especially the youth of the time in Biarritz. Everyone wanted to emulate him. Some began to practice, others fell by the wayside due to the difficulty of finding material or its high cost. But what is clear is that Biarritz was definitively linked to the beginning of surfing in Euskadi.
Nowadays surfing is a really popular sport along all the beautiful coast of the Basque Country with lots of surf-schools to teach beginners the sport has consolidated into a properous business for locals. For example the Pukas factory “Olatu” (which means Wave in Basque) is the biggest European surfboard manufacturer.