A wave doesn't ask if you're ready. It simply comes. Sérgio Monteiro has known this since childhood — and in that knowledge lies the whole spirit of Portuguese surfing.
Portugal opened the world's ocean routes five hundred years ago. Now it opens them again — on a board, in the spray, at dawn when the beach is still empty.
The Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Portugal functions as a wave-making machine. Thousands of kilometres of open water with no island between Lisbon and New York — nothing to impede the waves as they build speed. They arrive having gathered energy from the other side of the world, and break against a coastline that seems designed specifically for surfing: endless beaches, reefs, underwater canyons that turn an ordinary wave into a monster.
Nazaré has become the symbol. It was here in 2020 that António Laureano claimed to have ridden a 101-foot wave — 30 metres. If confirmed, it is the largest wave ever surfed in history. It is created by the Nazaré Canyon — 5,000 metres deep and 230 kilometres long, concentrating the energy of ocean swells the way a lens concentrates light.
But Nazaré is the extreme for the few. Portuguese surfing is not only giant waves. It is Ericeira — the first and only World Surfing Reserve in Europe, recognised by the WSL in 2011. It is Peniche, where the WSL Championship Tour's Rip Curl Pro is held. It is Cascais, Costa da Caparica, the Alentejo coast — hundreds of kilometres of perfect breaks the length of the entire shoreline.
Portugal's first surfer appeared in 1956 — Pedro Martins de Lima stood up on a 16-kilogram wooden board at Carcavelos beach. Before that he had spent four years bodysurfing — riding waves without a board — simply because he couldn't obtain proper equipment. When Portugal hosted its first ASP World Tour event in 1989, 2,000 spectators came to the beach. Today the championship at Peniche draws tens of thousands.
He stood on a board before he had learned to swim properly. That is what happens when you grow up beside the ocean — water stops being an element and becomes home. Sérgio Monteiro was born and raised in Portugal, and he has something that cannot be acquired through training alone — a wave instinct. He reads it before it forms.
Watching him from the shore you understand what it means to read the ocean. Not simply to ride waves, but to converse with them. Every session is a dialogue. And every time Sérgio comes out of the water, he knows something he didn't know before.
In surfing there is a Portuguese expression that resists translation — "saudade do mar." Longing for the sea. Not sadness, but a pull — the feeling that when you are away from the water, you already want to go back. For Sérgio this is not a metaphor. It is a schedule.
The Rip Curl Pro at Peniche is one of the most prestigious stops on the WSL Championship Tour. Every year the world's finest surfers come here — John John Florence, Italo Ferreira, Griffin Colapinto. The waves at Supertubos — the main break at Peniche — are considered among the most demanding and perfect for competition. A right-hand wave that unfurls like a living mechanism, giving surfers time for manoeuvres impossible at most other spots.
Ericeira is a different story. Seven world-class breaks across eight kilometres of coast: Ribeira d'Ilhas, Pedra Branca, Ponta do Canhão. In 2011 the WSL recognised it as the first World Surfing Reserve in Europe. This means the quality of waves here is so consistent and unique that it warrants protection as a natural monument.
Portuguese surfers are making ever stronger claims on the world stage. Frederico Morais from Cascais became the first Portuguese surfer on the Championship Tour. Vasco Ribeiro became the first Portuguese to win the WSL World Junior Championship in 2014. Teresa Bonvalot and Yolanda Hopkins competed at the Tokyo Olympics. Generation after generation, Portugal produces world-level surfers — and Sérgio Monteiro is one of those watched with hope.
Nazaré is a different kind of surfing. Not athletic, not competitive — more philosophical. When a wave the height of a ten-storey building bears down on you at the speed of a train, the question "why?" dissolves on its own. Only the present remains — three seconds of flight that you will remember for the rest of your life.
The Nazaré Canyon is unique. Five thousand metres deep — one of the deepest in the Atlantic — it acts as an amplifier. A swell moving from the open ocean enters the canyon, accelerates, concentrates, and emerges at the surface as a wave several times larger than whatever generated it at sea.
Garrett McNamara first opened Nazaré to big-wave hunting in 2011 — setting the world record at the time. After him everyone followed. Now every winter Nazaré becomes the capital of madness: jet skis tow surfers into waves that cannot be paddled into, helicopters film from above, thousands of spectators stand on the Sítio clifftop. This is not sport. It is opera.
When Garrett McNamara first appeared in Nazaré in 2011 and told local fishermen he wanted to ride the waves that smashed against the cliffs, the old men tapped their temples. Those waves had sunk fishing boats. To the locals they were a threat, not a sporting apparatus. A few months later McNamara set a world record, and the old men came to watch. They stood on the clifftop in silence. Then one of them said: "Pode ser que sejam loucos. Mas são os nossos loucos." They may be mad. But they're our mad ones.
A wave doesn't ask who you are. It has no time for biographies. There is only this moment — and what you do with it.
In 2020 António Laureano claimed a 101-foot wave — potentially the largest ever surfed in history.
One of the deepest underwater canyons in the Atlantic. It amplifies waves like a lens amplifies light — creating monsters from ordinary swells.
The first and only in Europe. The WSL designated Ericeira a reserve for the unique quality and variety of its waves — 7 world-class breaks across 8km of coast.
Pedro Martins de Lima stood on a 16-kilogram wooden board at Carcavelos. Before that he bodysurfed for 4 years — there was simply no equipment to be found.
The Portuguese language has a word — "saudade" — perhaps the most untranslatable word on earth. It is neither sadness nor nostalgia. It is a longing for something beautiful — that was, that is, or that may never happen, and yet you long for it all the same. Sailors used it when they put to sea. Surfers use it when they come out of the water.
Sérgio comes out of the water, looks at the next wave — and already wants to go back in. This is not sport. This is saudade do mar. A longing for the sea that is always right there.
Ericeira is the best place for surfing of all levels, from beginners to advanced. Forty minutes from Lisbon. Waves work year-round. Cascais and Costa da Caparica are closer to the city and suit learning. Peniche is for experienced surfers, particularly good in autumn and winter when the big Atlantic swells arrive.
Nazaré — for spectators only, or very experienced surfers with jet-ski support. Best season for big waves: November to March. The clifftop viewpoint at Sítio is free and open. It is one of the most breathtaking natural spectacles you can witness in Europe — standing on solid ground.