The People Of Tarifa
There´s a certain madness, a touch of wildness, that links the diverse bunch of foreigners who have chosen to make Tarifa their home.
On the one hand there´s the wind and kite surfing crowd, young, fit and enterprising, whose shops and associated businesses now fill the streets. They are the pioneers; the ones who came, saw, but never quite conquered the soul of the local people who still cling on to their centuries-old traditions with fierce pride. It is, after all that the first windsurf shop was opened by a foreigner in 1985. Until then, Tarifa was an undiscovered, inward-looking backwater with a reduced fishing industry. Now the knock-on effect of that first breath of new life has spread throughout the town giving it an identity and diversity hitherto unimagined.
Then there are the artist, the escapists, the nature lovers, the hippies and the spiritual navigators who are drawn here by some indefinable magnetic force. With them have come healing centers, yoga...