Surfing has officially been banned at Nazaré Praia do Norte after the historic Swell on October 28/29 attracted around 20.000+ of spectators in the middle of a pandemic last week. The decision was taken by Portugal’s National Health Commission on 4. November 2020.
“In the current context of the pandemic, Praia do Norte, municipality of Nazaré District of Leiria, is prohibited for the activities of Free Surf and Tow-in Surfing, as determined by the Regional Health Officer of the Regional Health Administration of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo, due to the promotion of public crowding, which constitutes an increased risk for public health.”, wrote Jose Antonio Zeferino Henriques, Lieutenant Commander of the National Ministry of Defense.
Too many spectators were near the lighthouse watching the big waves being surfed by the best surfers such as Sebastian Steudtner, Nic von Rupp, Kai Lenny and many more. Spectators not keeping enough social distance and many not wearing masks leaded the Municipality of Nazaré and the National Health Commission to take this decision.
On those two days we have only seen a hand full of police officers trying to enforce current measures. For this amount of people they were way too less to be able to handle the amount of spectators.
Many surfers complained about this ban taking place, since all of them were maintaining social distance and taking care of required measures due to the pandemic.
Maybe it would make sense to rethink this decision and allow surf again and rather control the amount of people going down to the event. This should be easy to handle since there are only a few roads leading to the lighthouse. Nazaré could close roads and don't let people through to at least make the surfing to the professionals possible. Spectators could easily just watch the couple of available live streams.