Report: Vans Salinas longboard festival

Definitively the 9th edition of the Vans longboard festival of Salinas was the most multitudinal with much difference. From Thursday 29 of July to Sunday 1 of August, Salinas became the world-wide capital of longboard.
Another important data from the point of view of the organization was that finally they have been able to become an more international event. The Vans longboard festival of Salina has stopped being the longboard event of national reference by receiving the amount of European coming from as different countries as Norway, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Germany, besides the habitual as the Italian, French, English, Irish, Brazilian, American, Australian and the Portuguese. All them to the call for the festival, for the celebration, not for the competition although that also has been held.
Concerts (mythical concert of los Coronas),long skate, film shows, waves, a little of all that everyone enjoyed like and when each wanted.

There were also a good package of stars such as Antoine Delpero, James Parry, Kassia Meador, Chris del Moro, Aurelien, etc… who increased the level exponentially technical and that merged with the atmosphere as if they were one more. The VIPS zones don’t fit in Salinas.

Next year edition will be 10th and the organisators are already preparing it, because they try to make something very special, but at the moment they still are enjoying the pleasure that has been receive you all in Salinas.

But who can better discribe what an effect the Vans longboard festival of Salinas can have on someone who lives for the passion of Surfing that the journalist, writer, photographer and surfer, Willy Uribe from Bilbao, one of the best expert about the Surf on the iberic peninsula and his history?! Here his impressions about the Event:

“The basic things are always present in Salinas: paraffin, boards, waves and some surfers who enjoy it. The Salinas Longboard Festival compared with the the championships is like the surf-clothes stores to the hard-ware surf-shops, it separates them to a galaxy.

Many of us we understand surf as place of encounter, in the amplest sense of the word, I even go further and I apply to it the sense of a whole life. Friends will accompany that you for always because the union is something so simple and cheers like surf, without more additives, like the spring water. Salinas, that human and social aspect, so necessary, it fulfills it in substitute.

I went with my doubts in regard to what I were going to find especially there, mainly by the repercussion extra-festival that would be held this year and by the concerts

And wishing that this year they won’t been held, because I n’ don’t like the noise that I can’t control (a criticizable position, obviously), I recognize that it didn’t cause insurmountable troubles and that it contributed in much to Castrillón local economy.

I had fun in Salinas. I was snail walking and the sun heated me on the front. For that reason I’m thankful to the Office of Facts, common sense in pure state, a pleasure to be after the bar of such an illustrious artesanal tavern. I became a pile of ideas, of as much people from here to there, as much transfer, of innumerable chats, although brief, so substantial.

And all that without catching an single wave, but I loaded my batteries. I noticed the colleagues of the Triangular’s little wall that I would recover my place on the line-up in September. Just because Salinas is used for that, Surf stimulating, telluric elixir, the astures threw a peñascu in Greenland and their waves arrive fresh to us, with the breath of red Erik and thousand polar bears.

Next year will be the 10th edition of the event. I’ll write a book to celebrate it: Taking air in Salinas… (and my apologies for the publicity, it were one of those ideas of which I spoke)”

Enough spoken, written, read, what ever… the way to get the ultimative impression absolutely perfect after these words and lines is by watching the Photo gallery with the pictures shot by Syvain Cazenave
 
By Willy Uribe