Spain Surf Forecast

Surfing in Spain

Spain holds two surf coasts that behave like different countries. The north faces the open Atlantic across the Bay of Biscay, and from September to April it takes the Atlantic swells that run the length of Europe's western seaboard, arriving with enough size and period to work reefs and rivermouths as well as beaches. Galicia's exposed northwest corner picks up swell when everywhere else is flat. Asturias and Cantabria hide pointbreaks and rivermouths in deep green inlets. The Basque coast is where the swell meets a shelf that organises it, and where Spain's best known waves break, Mundaka among them. Further south, the Costa de la Luz, the Atlantic stretch between the Portuguese border and Tarifa, inverts the pattern: smaller, more forgiving beachbreaks, warmer water, and a season that keeps working through the summer when the north has gone quiet. It can be excellent, and it carries the year when the north is flat. What makes Spain hard to forecast is how sharply conditions change over a few kilometres of indented coast, where a wind that ruins one bay is offshore in the next. SurfCheck covers 21 Spanish spots with hourly wave, wind and tide data, free and without a login.