The Ultimate Guide to Valencia Surf

Playa de la Patacona is the northernmost section of urban beachfront in Valencia city. It’s quieter than Arenas and takes about an hour to get to on public transport. As with its compadres, we’d recommend staying here and traveling into the city, since they don’t like you lugging sticks on the trams in these parts. Alternatively, you can rent boards at Patacona because it’s kinda’ now the de facto learner hub of the town.

That’s not so much down to the fact that the waves are nice and easy – all the waves here are! It’s more that it’s got a touch better consistency than its compadres. Basically, if there’s a windswell up Patacona will be getting some action.

The name of the game is very much slop for much of the season, but occasional chest-high peaks combine with offshores coming down from the sierras and this one really shapes up.

Las Arenas is the main beach of Valencia. It’s always bustling, both winter and summer, is lined by more tapas bars and sunset beer joints than you can shake your patatas bravas at, and has some really cool neighborhoods behind it that are filled with great accom options for surfers (like this one).

And the spot is the surf capital of the whole city. Big marina breakwaters to the south of it have really helped to bulk up the sand bars along the beach. They’re now rippled into peaks and troughs that offer endless peaks as the tide dips away and pushes up. It’s shockingly consistent stuff, though autumn and winter windswells pushing up from the S or the E are generally the mainstays. Summer can see refracting groundswell pulses from the Atlantic that work well, but they have to be big.

We ummed and ahhed about whether to put El Saler in the region or city category. In the end, we settled on the former because it’s within the Albufera nature reserve to the south of town and a car is really the best way to get there with the board.

The whole five miles of beachfront here can offer peak after peak of sandbank A-frame fun when the winter windswells get kicking. It’s not as protected as the breaks of Arenas in the town because the breakwaters and harbor is too far away. The flip side is that the crowds dip and you can always keep cruising until you find a spot to claim as your own for the day.

We love Saler as an option for beginners up to good intermediates because it’s not crowded and there’s usually good reform secondary swell for learners but also decent outside waves for better surfers.

There’s a very chilled scene at Marenyet Beach, the main playa in the town of the same name just to the south of Valencia. That’s one reason we like it. The other reason is the fact that there are all manner of breakwaters and jetty walls poking out and pointing in various directions here. They can offer a multitude of wave shapes and directions depending on the swell, with line ups that are always a whole load smaller than in the city.

This spot works best with a strong easterly (Levante) swell and a westerly wind (Poniente). However, as with any surf spot, it’s somewhat hit and miss. The sandy bottom contributes to a shifting peak, so you’ll need to be adaptable, always searching for the sweet spot. the real magic happens in the autumn and winter months, during the rare storm swells, when Marenyet can offer clean, chest-high waves, offering a thrilling ride for experienced surfers.

There are particularly great rights on the inside of the harbor walls.

Cullera, often called by the name of the regional hub of Jucar, is the gateway to another run of beaches south of Valencia. Most of these face slightly more due-east than the ones above them. That’s great to know if the westerly keep pushing through, as is the case for much of the autumn, because they’ll be offshore here.

The best spots are probably the rights and lefts that form on the banks that have been created by the break walls at ethe mouth of the Jucar River. They’re not your classic points in that they tend to roll in towards the concrete but they can be good rides of 50-60 meters.