Pukas Founder Iñigo Letamendia Passes Away at 77

Donostia (San Sebastián) has lost one of its favourite sons. Iñigo Letamendia — known to everyone as “Indigo” — died today at 77.

A pioneer in the truest sense of the word, he borrowed someone else’s surfboard one day in 1968 at La Concha, and his life instantly changed. “The feeling I had when paddling and standing in the water with the board was incredible,” he once said of that moment. “Since then, I haven’t been able to quit.”

He never did. By the early 1970s, when Spain was still under Franco’s dictatorship, a time when growing your hair long, drifting into a hippie commune, or simply having fun could feel like breaking the law, Iñigo and three close friends decided to take a different path: making surfboards. What started as an escape from a drab, controlled nation became a way of life. In 1979, he founded Pukas Surf, which would grow into the largest surfboard factory in Europe.

When Iñigo left San Sebastián to pursue the uncertain dream of building surfboards with his friends, his college sweetheart, Marian Azpiroz, followed soon after. According to lore, while most surfers’ girlfriends sunbathed on the beach, Marian cut up the house curtains to sew bikinis, then boardshorts, then boardbags. It was the unlikely beginning of what the Pukas surfwear empire would eventually become.

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Along the way, the charismatic Basque forged strong bonds with many of surfing’s greats — from world champions like Occy, Sunny Garcia and Andy Irons, to Tahitian legend Vetea David, to local heroes such as Ibon Amatriain and Aritz Aranburu, whose careers were made possible by his generosity and influence.

But a life well lived isn’t marked by famous friends or business success alone. It’s also in the small graces. Like the time he pulled €10 from his pocket on an airplane to buy lunch for a stranger’s hungry child, then refused repayment. Or how he became “our childhood idol,” as one local put it, “responsible for the children of Zarautz leaving football for surfing” — which, in that part of the world, is pretty much the same as turning water into wine.

Iñigo died at home in San Sebastián, surrounded by his wife, Marian — a partner in both life and Pukas — and the couple’s children, Tala and Adur, who remain involved in Pukas’s operations. And when you think about it, that’s exactly how someone like Iñigo should depart: close to loved ones, in peace, and near the sea that made his extraordinary life possible.

Agur, Iñigo!