Gisela Pulido: "That immense and wild beach was another world"

Gisela Pulido, world champion of kitesurfing, is very clear that the beaches of Sant Pere Pescador are her favorite place in Catalonia: “It's where I learned to do kitesurfing. Besides, I have many memories of being on vacation with my parents”. They used to go on weekends, long weekends, for Easter and in the summer, taking advantage of the fact that the tramuntana in winter, and the garbí and migjorn in summer were perfect for windsurfing, the sport her father practiced. “Used to the beach of Premià de Mar, which is where I'm from and where we lived, Sant Pere had nothing to do with it, it was another world”. Besides the wind, Premià has a more urban beach, with coarser sand, parked cars are visible, and to get there you had to cross the road first and then the train tracks. On the other hand, Sant Pere is an immense beach, the longest in the Gulf of Roses, it is wild, the sand is fine, there are dunes and the easternmost part is part of the Natural Park of the Aiguamolls de l'Empordà. Surely for this reason, even though more than 20 years have passed, it is practically the same as when Gisela was little.  They also went to other beaches like Pals and Empuriabrava, but Sant Pere marked it for what happened on June 24, 2003, her father's saint's day. Until then, Gisela had done windsurfing, surfing and bodyboarding, but kitesurfing was forbidden to her, it was too dangerous for a girl who weighed 30 kilos: “The more they told me no, the more I wanted to try it,” admits the athlete. She remembers that, taking advantage of the fact that the wind was barely blowing, she asked if she could take the equipment to try it in the water. It was the perfect excuse for Joan to say yes. Since then, she hasn't stopped until now, when she is a professional in this sport. She has been told that with only three attempts she managed to get out. A Rip Curl representative who was teaching a class also saw it, and became her first sponsor: “He gave us the card and said we could count on them for any equipment we needed.” Besides kitesurfing, Sant Pere Pescador is a special place for the memories he has with his family. They stayed at the Ballena Alegre campsite with a converted camper van. He loved not having a super-structured plan for what would happen each day and it was always perfect for the children to enjoy: he was with friends, in the pool, playing, eating ice cream and also on the beach where he spent endless hours in the water, diving with goggles, dedicated to looking for 1,000 stones and round pieces of glass, to expand his collection. He also keeps a special memory of breakfasts: “I used to eat toast with oil and salt, and milk with cocoa. I remember the taste of that bread as if I had tasted it a couple of days ago”.