Three and a half years ago, we finished the report we have just written after learning about the intention to build a surf park on Mount Antondegi in San Sebastian:

“It remains to be seen that in Gipuzkoa popular movements and political opposition are able to stop the neoliberal leadership of the municipal government PNV-PSE. In view of the background of recent years – spending millions of euros on the metro that has revolutionized the city centre, building an underground station for the TAV in the city, opening dozens of more hotels, paying a sculpture of four million euros on the island, starting an incinerator in the suburbs, doubling the Garbera shopping centre, caring for architectural heritage as trash, etc. – the prediction does not seem crazy. How will it end? That’s yet to be seen.”

The answer was unexpectedly clarified on 17 May: no artificial surf parks will be held in Antondegi. They have filtered it, according to the Urbanism Department of the City of San Sebastian, to El Diario Vasco, as it published on Friday. Once the land has been declared again agricultural land, the intention of the company Wavegarden has been relegated. However, according to the newspaper Vocento, the company is not to give in and is already looking for a new location in the city to make a pool of these characteristics.

The 3,000 homes that wanted to stay on the Antondegi skirts several years ago have also closed the door completely, as mentioned in the article, in the area of the Loyola military barracks, considering that there are "better opportunities". The Urban Planning Department has pointed out that Antondegi is part of the city's green belt and that it will defend its natural value, which until now EH Bildu, Elkarrekin Donostia and environmental agents insisted and demanded.

The information collected in the draft PGOU is the one published on Friday by El Diario Vasco. Although it will still have to go through a long process until this draft is provisionally approved, the councillor of Urbanism of the PNV, Nekane Arzallus, pointed out in the newspaper mentioned that "the wager is firm".

Opposition to the project begins to celebrate victory. On Friday, EH Bildu of the city wrote on social media: "The PNV and the PSE have regressed and gained common sense. EH Bildu will continue to work for the general interest in the context of the climate emergency." Eguzki from the platform Antondegi Berdea, created under the motto "Olas en el mar", to bring another example, said on social networks "Victoria! Antondegi has been released from at least the artificial wave. It is not bad news! ".

Spinning around with the artificial wave

A few years ago the city authorities publicly mentioned the intentions to build an artificial slug.

The artificial wave project presented in 2007 at the Mayor of Odón Elorza has remained for history. On the beach of Zurriola itself, in the middle of the sea, a gigantic mechanical wave of 230 meters long, 40 meters wide and height of the Kursaal building was proposed. Ander Usabiaga recovered in social networks the article written by Mitxel Ezquiaga in El Diario Vasco, in which he presented the invention as “an image of an innovative Gipuzkoa”. Nor would it be a tourist attraction project, the idea was to “promote renewable energies”, although the idea was presented by the tourism councilor. To inaugurate the wave project, the organization of an international conference on renewable energies was announced, with names of characters known as Al Gore or singer Bono to come to the city from the beginning. It was never done and the project ended up in the dump of history.

A decade later, in 2017, Deputy Mayor of San Sebastian, Ernesto Gasco, current high commissioner of the Spanish Government against child poverty, expressed his intention to make an artificial wave, this time on the outskirts of the city, in Altza or in Zubieta. In 2018 he portrayed the idea again at international surf conferences, but this time he said that if the new Spanish military barracks were not held in Martutene’s Antondegi, they would propose doing so there. In the summer he said that “it would help prevent the congestion of beaches” and that it would generate 500 jobs, as mentioned above.

As I say, by the end of 2020 came Antondegi’s proposal, which in May 2024 has been rejected.

Against surfing values

The non-profit association created by European surfers, Surf Rider, with 50,000 international partners, was positioned in 2020 against these infrastructures. The full argument can be read on your website. They basically claim that the environmental impact of Surf Park is greater than its contribution to surfing.

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