An iconic urban surf break in Portugal is reaching one of its final chapters.
In March 2019, SurferToday ran a feature on the controversial decision to extend a breakwater in Matosinhos, Portugal, one of Europe's most popular and frequented surf breaks.
At the time, the Portuguese government had approved and sponsored a structural change to the southern breakwater of a port near Matosinhos Beach, just a mile from the UNESCO World Heritage city of Porto.
The idea of adding a 985-foot (300-meter) stone wall, according to the port authority and the national government in Lisbon, would allow larger container ships to dock at the Port of Leixões, the country's second-largest port.
In other words, the port would be able to continue growing and increasing its activity despite being completely surrounded by cities and residential areas.
The extension of any breakwater worldwide always carries significant consequences.
Just ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which is responsible for over 600 breakwaters and jetties nationwide, many dating back to the mid- to late 1800s.
The number of variables at stake when you build even the smallest structure is mindblowing. From shifting sands and dune erosion to currents and tidal effects, there is nearly anything that one of these coastal barriers won't impact.
And the Portuguese coastline is no exception.
A post-industrial surf break
Matosinhos Beach, a generous stretch of sand perfectly integrated into the urban context, has been the go-to summer destination for many water sports enthusiasts and ocean lovers in Greater Porto.
And thanks to its geographical orientation, it receives the predominant NW swells and winds at the right angle to produce consistent, all-level waves, nearly every single day of the year.
Matosinhos has bred thousands of Portuguese surfers, some of them talented enough to shine anywhere in the world, in all sorts of conditions.
With the growth of tourism, and surfing in particular, it has become a truly international beach and lineup, with hundreds of foreigners paddling out at this multiple-peak beach break, regardless of experience.
In terra firma, there is no lack of fancy restaurants, brunch corners, cafeterias, ice cream stores, healthy living businesses, and high-end co-work spaces. And residential buildings - maybe too many.
So, the area became an extremely popular place for young adults and adults alike.
Out in the water, on a good day for surfing, you may easily count a thousand surfers from 7 am to 10 am.
Many locals grew up surfing here, especially from the late 1980s, early 1990s onward.
Meanwhile, the surroundings changed dramatically, and dozens of expensive condos were built to accommodate the demand.
Where there were canned tuna and other fishing industries, there are now luxurious apartments with a price per square meter that rivals Europe's most expensive capitals.
The number of surf schools operating here also grew exponentially, and the city became an unlikely urban surf destination.
"World's Best Fish" in contaminated waters
All this, au pair with the town's suspicious motto, "World's Best Fish," a claim you would certainly not expect from a port city, where the local waters are never supposed to be transparent and clean.
Despite the just-average water quality at nearby beaches, conditions have improved slightly over the decades, with the neighboring city of Porto doing a tremendous job with its sewage and rainwater systems and subsequently conquering the sought-after Blue Flag beach trophy.
But Matosinhos, which has been ruled by the same party since the democratic era arrived in Portugal in 1974, struggled to do the same with its waters.
One of the beach's cancers is Ribeira da Riguinha e Ribeira de Carcavelos, a stream that carries treated and untreated, legal and illegal, water for decades, which ends up in the surfers' and swimmers' area.
The problem has been identified, but there has never been an in-depth investment in resolving the issue.
Over the years, the water quality tests ranged from very poor to average and good. Stability has never been the norm.
The number of cases of surf-related diseases like gastroenteritis reported by local (and foreign) surfers here is countless, along with skin issues.
It has been a known public health threat for a long time, but the quality of the surf often conflicts with the clear instructions not to get in these waters.
And therefore, surfers always put their safety at risk.
Sorry, we're open
Now, here's a Third World finding.
The Matosinhos seaside boardwalk features a permanent warning sign advising against surfing or swimming due to poor water quality.
In theory, it should be equivalent to a closed beach.
However, the city issues bathing zone permits with lifeguard patrols every summer, from June through September.
And thousands of beachgoers just lay their towels on the sand and go for a dip whenever the green flag is waving in the wind.
There's more. City officials plan to build a pipeline extension to divert the untreated waters 600 yards offshore.
In other words, they're sending polluted waters out to sea, not addressing the source of the problem, and potentially diverting sewage toward the nearby southern beaches of Porto.
The contradiction lives on, along with the health issues young and old face after ingesting this water.
With the completion of the 985-foot-long extension of the breakwater, the potential consequences noted by SurferToday in 2019 and again in 2021 became a reality.
In the summer of 2025, the Portuguese Environmental Agency (APA) closed the beach to swimming and surfing on more than a dozen occasions.
The prohibitions were soon lifted whenever water sample tests were barely looking better.
And so the Matosinhos Beach was on and off in the warm season, in one of the worst water quality years of the last few decades.
The outcome was expected.
Also, the fact that there will be an even more enclosed bay beach at the exit of a large port will never result in better water quality.
A breakwater extension that halved the surf
And if we talk about the swell arrival conditions, the first impressions report a loss of surf in the 40-60 percent range.
In other words, surfers are less in the water because the consistency that once made it famous is now decaying.
There are also more dangerous currents, especially near the breakwater, with unexpected backwash movements, which have already resulted in fatalities.
But there will be more and more negative consequences of simultaneously trying to make a pact with the devil and keeping the tourism and sports afloat.
With more and larger ships entering and leaving the port, the risk of accidents also increases.
In 2023, an oil tanker caught fire on the outskirts of the city, and environmental tragedy was on everyone's minds. Fortunately, the impact was contained.
The Port of Leixões is pushing for even more industrial impact on the neighboring residential communities.
A larger container parking area inside the structure and the construction of a marina by the breaker and the beach raised concerns, prompting protests and petitions from the population.
In fact, the possibility of ending Matosinhos Beach's status as an officially sanctioned beach is, as surreal and unthinkable as it might sound, at stake and under study.
On the other side of the barricade, there's Port of Leixões, an entity that claims that halting the expansion of the facility is boosting the national economy and that the structure "was always there before the city grew around it."
It's with arguments like these that the local populations can count on.
And then, with the last call being made 330 kilometers away, in the air-conditioned offices of the government in Lisbon, locals know that their opinion doesn't count and that their council authority's voice is too weak or too compromised to be heard or effective in bringing about change in favor of the population.
Jardim do Mar, part II
It reminds us of another world-class wave Portugal lost forever. Jardim do Mar, on the island of Madeira, was one of the planet's best point breaks.
It was destroyed nearly overnight with the construction of a seawall that killed the wave that broke there like magic.
The decision made headlines around the world and even triggered the birth of Save the Wave Coalition.
Nearly 25 years later, Portugal, a nation of sun, beaches, history, and food that sells itself as a tourism destination, is ready to lose another gem.
And even if you take surfing out of the equation, citizen-led movements like "Diz Não ao Paredão" ("Say No to the Breakwater") and non-governmental organizations such as Surfrider Porto and Zero underscore the beach's future unviability for bathing.
It's democracy and people at the heart of a politician's mission at its best, just like the coastal waters of Matosinhos, the home to the "World's Best Fish."
Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com
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