WaveMakers 7 is about surfing federations and we chat with Carlos López, the president of the Catalan Surf Ferederation. You'll learn what is a Surfing Federation, if you should be part of it, which watersports are included, events, how is funded and much more ... including wavepools.
Audio in Spanish, transcript in English:
OK. First of all, who are you?
I am Carlos López, the president of the Catalan Surf Federation.
And what exactly is the Catalan Surf Federation?
The Catalan Surf Federation is the entity that carries everything that is part of the promotion of sports and within what is competitions, training, let's say the one that governs Catalonia, on surfing and its different modalities.
What goals has The Federation right now?
Well, the main objective is the promotion of sport. We, as I told you before, are an entity that promotes and its main objective is to promote the sport in all its aspects, both at a competitive level as well as at an amateur level, and basically that is our main objective.
Okay, what you say is interesting to me, at a professional level and at an amateur level, since a person who does surf as a hobby, do you need to be federated?
There's no need, It is recommended. It's like when we go to practice mountaineering to the mountains. It is not our environment. We don't have “guts”, we don't know how to swim since the beginning. It’s not our environment. It is always advisable to be covered for all the things that can happen. It's not mandatory, not for the moment. They don't force us to have insurance to be able to go practice our sport, but it is recommended, and we believe that from the Federation it is important to be able to count with an insurance that can cover you, right?
That's why in the last three or four years, we have created an insurance in which what it provides to you is civil liability insurance and accident insurance that covers that if you hurt someone or hurt yourself you can also go and heal yourself. So basically, for an amateur person, for any surfer, is it like a kind of insurance?
Yes, exactly.
Ok. And the federations, is it a public organization or a privately funded organization?
The Federation is mostly a private organization. Yes, we have delegated public powers of the sport promotion in our modality. Like any other federation, the resources those available to any national federation, they are own resources that are given for the licenses, insurances, training courses, activities, that the Federation itself can promote and other part that are the subsidies. We are a very small federation and recently created and we are still not in everything that is... Everything that is the wheel of subsidies, our main source of income are our own resources.
And on the other hand, at a professional level, as a professional surfer, does it offer anything more, beyond insurance?
It gives you the competition license, that allows you to compete at an international level. Our licenses are homologated at the national level. Needless. Many years ago you needed to have two types of license, the license here in Catalonia to be able to compete in Catalonia and a national license because we were not integrated in the Spanish Surfing Federation. It was my first goal so that people do not have to pay two licenses, now we have a single license and it is valid in all Spain. And currently we have people. For example, Vicente Romero, professional surfer with our license, is competing in the WSL.
Okay, this is interesting. because the other day, thinking about it, it reminded me a little, the whole thing. of the surf federations, a bit to what happens in the world of boxing, that there are like 200 different federations. Here in Catalonia we see that it exists also the Canoe Federation, who picks up some water sports... On the Surf Federation, where it is limited on the aquatic sports? What sports does it include? What sports doesn't?
Well, basically we could say that the Surf Federation encompasses all sliding aquatic sports that do not imply a motor. We could say “well it's also sliding water skiing” for example. But needs a boat to be carried and doesn't have a flag like wind or wind foil or windsurfing. Those ones we slide on the water and the only one, for example, that we do have, is the stand up paddle that we do use an oar, but unlike any other of these, we use a single blade paddle.