Our Story

Our story, the story of IFACH Woodworks, is the story of the people who belong to this project and of our relationship.

Santiago is a telecommunications engineer who spent 35 years working on satellites (among many other things), though, for a long time, he has also been building boards and kayaks in the spare moments he could find. Anything related to something as disparate as space, wood, and water fascinates him. He was born in Cedeira (A Coruña), and since he was a child he carved small wooden figures with a pocket knife on the driftwood he found on the beach. His brother Carlos’ passion for water skiing led the three of us to try it and to buy a boat, Chiquita, to practice in the estuary. It was 1993. Later came wakeboarding, and in 2008 Santi began making custom wake boards for our children, Marcos and Berta, and for his sister Maite. Each board had its own name and character; all of them were part of our summers for many years.

Between 2012 and 2016 we lived in the U.S. There, we began building kayaks, following models characteristic of Maryland. We spent wonderful moments paddling in the Potomac River and along the Chesapeake Bay; the sense of peace brought by the sound of paddles on the water has stayed with us ever since. We returned from there with Xian and Brual as part of our luggage.

Since he was young, Guillermo, our nephew, spent his summers with us. He came from Valencia—where he is from—to Madrid; then, we would travel together to Cedeira and from there return to Moraira, in Alicante, where we would always stay at least one week to enjoy the Mediterranean: that sea, that light, and that sky that complement so well the landscapes of Cedeira.

Altogether, the pieces of summer in Cedeira and Moraira—and the memories of mornings at Mi Señora, As Onreiras, walks through Vilarube, and swims at Moraig, Baladrar, or El Portet—gave us, for many years, much of the energy needed to start the winter cycle of hard and passionate work in our respective professions.

The next creative cycle could begin at any time and was always circular, because during the conversations and meetings we had in winter, ideas emerged for the next board to be built or kayak to be handcrafted—whether it was as a gift for Marcos’ graduation, or a new design light enough for Berta, a featherweight, to carry it to the water on her own. Likewise, our R&D process was always sustainable: no idea was ever discarded—only evolved—and no development was ever useless.

Guille is an industrial engineer. One winter he met Eva at university, and they have been together ever since. She is our connection to Massanassa, where she was born, where they live with the three youngest members of this community—Fede, Vega, and Greta—and where we have the studio in which we are shaping our dream: sharing what we have only been enjoying ourselves until now—light, robust, and unique wooden constructions; to us, the best boards possible.

Sharing our kayaks and the Stand-Up Paddleboards (SUP) that Santi had spent hundreds of hours designing required more time for manufacturing than our occasional trips to Massanassa and Moraira allowed. We moved into a larger workshop, where we had already begun testing; Santi, Guille, and I founded IFACH Woodworks, and in early October 2024 Santi left his job at INTA. He left behind many years of trips to Antarctica, designs of devices to measure the ozone hole, and his beloved ANSER.

Preparing the new workshop was an immense task. It is hard to measure the effort it required—because it was so huge and also because we have almost erased it from our memories. On October 29, 2024, everything was ready to receive the final machine that would allow us to begin “formal” production in November. But the flash floods that devastated Massanassa—and many other places in our country—on that very day, when everything was finally ready, also swept away our sea-colored floor, our materials meant to make wave drawings, and a large part of our dream.

Now, we begin again. We bridge sea and wood. We work hard so that not only we can enjoy kayaks and paddleboards that are truly unique. We have planted paulownia trees in Massanassa to use their wood and make our small-vessel construction process circular—caring for the sea and enjoying it, with you.

Elena, CEO & writer at IFACH Woodworks