Skydive Empuriabrava

History

Since 1973, weekends have been a time for skydiving at Empuriabrava Aerodrome, managed by the ParaClub Girona section of Aeroclub Girona. In 1975, the management of the aerodrome changed hands when it was bought by the company Promotora Deportiva del Ampurdán, which in 1984 was sold to the company Anglo Costa Brava de Inversiones. This company leased the facilities to the company Centro de Paracaidismo Costa Brava, the professional skydiving management firm. The business name of the aerodrome, which until then had been Centro de Paracaidismo Costa Brava, changed to Skydive Empuriabrava in 1985.

In 1987, Anglo Costa Brava de Inversiones sold the concern to the company Fórmula y Propiedades S.L.

Centro de Paracaidismo Costa Brava, the company in charge of the skydiving operations and tenant of Anglo Costa Brava de Inversiones, continued with the same lease arrangement for the facilities. It was in this period that the aerodrome won acclaim in Europe for its work. Centro de Paracaidismo Costa Brava, owned by the American partners Mitch Decoteau, María Peterson and the Swiss Roland Hilfiker, brought the method known as AFF (Accelerated freefall) to the aerodrome. This is an innovative method for teaching skydiving that involves a tandem jump with a professional instructor, which places skydiving within everyone's reach and does not require specific training (it is even available for people with physical disabilities). In 1986, Jaime Comas Espigulé joined the company.

In 1985, work at the aerodrome involved five people and the company did not own any light aircraft: a Cesna 207, the first used at Girona airport, was rented. The first Pilatus was not bought until 1987, two years later.

The period from 1985 to 1994 saw the first milestones on a European scale. Jumps at Empuriabrava aerodrome rose from 12,000 to 35,000 a year. By 1985 it was now one of the few aviation centres open continuously throughout the year. The Christmas Boogie, an international event for skydivers who meet to take part in unusual competitions and group jumps, attracted 1,000 registered participants in 1987 and had to be moved to Girona Airport so that aircraft such as the DC-3 and the Caribou could be used. Freefall and precision landing jumps were performed and in 1992, with the arrival of the Olympic flame for the Barcelona Olympic Games, a demonstration freefall jump featured a representation of the five Olympic rings.

The aerodrome changed hands again: in 1994, Peter Jones, Ivan Coufal and Jaime Comas Espigulé bought Centro de Paracaidismo Costa Brava and jumps at the aerodrome rose to 134,000 per year, making it the aerodrome with the highest number of jumps in the world. The meetings and exhibitions that had been staged for years became increasingly consolidated benchmarks on the world skydiving calendar. The mild winter temperatures of the Empordà region turned the Boogie Christmas meeting into Europe's largest event and required a much larger fleet of aircraft to cater for the 12,000 jumps. The Speed Star competition, which involves ten skydivers from the same team forming a star formation as fast as possible in the air, became a characteristic feature of the event. This was also a period of records and the site became home to the Spanish Formation Skydiving team and the French Freefly World Champion team. It also offered the highly spectacular discipline of wingsuit flying. In order to rationalise the business situation after all the aerodrome's changes of ownership over the years, in 2005 Skydive Empuriabrava acquired Fórmula y Propiedades SL, which it owned until 2012 when the company was bought by a sovereign wealth fund from Dubai through the company Skydive Dutch BV. From that time onwards, investments were made in the facilities with a view to making it a key centre for skydiving lovers. It has now been the centre with the highest number of jumps in Europe since 1998.

Timeline

Facilities

In addition to the hangars, packing zone, private team rooms and onsite gas station, it has Pilatus Porter aircraft, a De Havilland Twin Otter and a Beechcraft 99 (plane with the fastest take-off in Europe). The facilities also include offices and a bar and restaurant zone. Access is free.

Services

It offers tandem skydiving, beginner's flights and aerial photography work. The school offers formation skydiving courses for beginners and advanced students, freefly canopy, wingsuit flying (or wingsuiting), formation skydiving for top competition, training for top competition, and flight instruction for professionals.

Competitions

Skydive Empuriabrava not only holds rallies, seminars and minor competitions, but has also hosted top world sports events. It has organised the eighth World Formation Skydiving Championship (1989), two World Cups (1994 and 2002) and the fourth World Freestyle and Skysurfing Championship (1993). The 1993 Championship was attended by Patrick de Gayardon (inventor of skysurf and modern wingsuit flying), Olav Zipser (considered the father of the freefly discipline), Mike Michigan (freestyle pioneer) and Marco Manna, considered the all-time best freestyler.

It also hosted the ninth Formation Skydiving World Cup (1994), the third POPS World Championship (1995), an Extreme Games (1996), the first Spanish Freestyle and Skysurfing Championship (1997), the first European 16-Way Formation Skydiving Championship (1998), the first 16-Way Formation Skydiving World Cup (1998), the twenty-fourth Spanish Skydiving Championship (2002), the thirteenth Skydiving World Cup (2002) and the twenty-fifth Spanish Skydiving Championship (2003).

From 2004 to 2006 it also hosted the King of Swoop competitions (initially known as the Beach Swoop Challenge), one of the world's most spectacular skydiving contests that brings together specialists in swooping, which is a landing technique based on speed, distance and precision. This competition has been reinitiated in 2014.

Since 1989, and particularly since 1993, it has been the venue for Spanish, European and world competitions in different skydiving disciplines, notably freestyle, POPS, extreme games, swoop, skysurfing, freefly and canopy formation skydiving.

Records set at the facilities

The following records have been set at the facilities:

Participation in world records

In order to promote the sport, the aerodrome supports highly ambitious sportspeople involved in official competitions or in setting world records. It has also been the training site for the Spanish National Skydiving Team and for other national teams that trained here prior to becoming world champions. Examples are the Swiss, the English women's team, the Belgian and the Russian teams, and the French team that was World Champion in 2003. This team included the French Babylon Freefly team, still currently considered the world leader as well as an organiser of top events and jumps, the school of which has run training at Empuriabrava since 2003. Skydive Empuriabrava has also been the training site for members of the "Wings Project" since it began, and later for different challenges such as the 15-km Strait of Gibraltar jump record in 2005.

The Empuriabrava Skydive team takes part in skydiving demonstrations worldwide and has achieved the following records:

Wings Project

After a project in Norway, in 1999 members of the aerodrome team Santiago Corella and Toni López, together with high-risk sportsman Álvaro Bultó, came up with what was known as the "Wings Project" ("Proyecto Alas"), a professional skydiving and BASE jumping team whose objective was to tackle four challenges and overcome natural elements in special conditions such as relief, temperature (extreme heat or cold) or lack of oxygen, and skydive freefall with wingsuits. The initiative and training originated at Skydive Empuriabrava. While rising to these challenges, they twice beat the world record for human freefall flight, which they themselves had set.

Awards

The constant flow of skydivers and accompanying parties and seasonal continuity has established a regularity that has earned Skydive Empuriabrava the "Espiga i Timó" Award of the Council of Castelló d'Empúries, the 22nd Tourism Night Award from the Girona School of Tourism, and the Association of Tourist Apartments "Sun of the Costa Brava" Award.

In 2003, the Generalitat of Catalonia used the occasion of the millionth jump to award Castelló d'Empúries the status of Sports Tourism Destination (DTE) for skydiving, in acknowledgement of the facilities.

In 2010, the Generalitat of Catalonia recognised its outstanding contribution to tourism in Catalonia by awarding it the Tourism Diploma of Catalonia.

Exhibitions and collaborative projects

Book of honour

Its reputation as a stage for European and world titles, the quality of the challenges held at the facilities and its location on the Costa Brava attract famous sportspeople and public figures from different fields, and have made it a venue for the celebrations of other companies.

World acclaimed sportspeople from different disciplines, such as tennis players Juan Carlos Ferrero and Sergi Bruguera, motorcyclists Adam Raga, Àlex Crivillé and Sete Gibernau, racing driver Marc Gené, world motorcycling champion Valentino Rossi, Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher, taekwondo expert Joel González, swimmer Clara Basiana and sports-adventurer Álvaro Bultó, have jumped here. One famous anecdote is the story of Marta Ferrusola, wife of former President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Jordi Pujol, who made her first parachute jump from the facilities.

It has also been used as a set for films and music videos. In the year 2000, Fatboy Slim's music video "Bird of Prey" was filmed here, as were the exteriors, in March 2004, for the skydiving chase scenes from the French production Secret Agents, featuring Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel. Later, in 2011, it was used to shoot the exteriors for the skydiving scenes from the feature Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (You only live once), one of Bollywood's most successful films.