Local story
The skatepark above Taghazout
A public concrete park on the hill above the village, built in 2017 by more than a hundred volunteers and run since by the local association. Bowl, street section, boards to borrow, and the best sunset in Taghazout.
08/09/2026 · 3 min read
There is a sign at the top end of Taghazout's main street pointing up the hill. Follow the goat track for ten or fifteen minutes — it is steep, and it is worth doing in trainers — and you come out on a concrete park with a bowl, a street section and the whole Atlantic behind it. You can also drive up off the N1 if you would rather not climb.
Taghazout Skatepark is public and free. It belongs to the village rather than to a hotel or a camp, which is unusual enough here to be the point of it.
Built in three weeks by strangers
It went up in 2017. Make Life Skate Life, a non-profit that builds concrete parks with local skate communities, brought the design and the expertise; more than a hundred volunteers from twenty-two countries brought the labour, alongside people from the village. The land was public and the local authorities, businesses and residents backed it. Then it was handed over to the Taghazout Skatepark Association, which has run it since.
That handover is the reason the place still works. It was not built as an amenity for visitors who might like a skate between surfs. It was built because there were already kids in Taghazout skating on whatever they could find, and it stayed theirs afterwards.
Boards, lessons and who is on the concrete
The association keeps boards and protective gear for children who cannot buy their own, which is most of what the shop's takings pay for. If you turn up without a set-up, the shop on site rents boards and pads, and Gharla Skate School runs lessons — around €30 for two hours, less per session if you book several. Surfskate lessons go through the shop too. Worth messaging ahead in either case, because the schedule bends around school hours and swell.
The skaters range from children on their first pushes to people who have been riding for thirty-five years, and the older ones tend to teach the younger ones without being asked. It is a good park to learn in for that reason more than for its obstacles.
Evenings
Skating is not the whole of it. The park hosts competitions, music, barbecues and the occasional film projected onto a wall, all free, and it fills up at dusk because it is the best place in the village to watch the sun go into the sea. If you want the concrete to yourself, go in the middle of the day; if you want to see why the park matters to Taghazout, go at six.
It is a shared local space and it reads as one. Skate if you skate, sit on the edge if you do not, and buy something from the shop either way — that is what funds the boards the kids are using.
Practical
- Getting there — signed off the top of Taghazout's main street, or the trail opposite Anwal Morocco Restaurant. Ten to fifteen minutes of steep walking, or drive up via the N1.
- Cost — free to skate.
- Shop — board and pad rental, open 10:00 to 20:00.
- Lessons — Gharla Skate School, from about €30 for a two-hour session and cheaper per session in blocks. Instagram @gharla_skate_school, WhatsApp +212 634 654 666.
- Best time — daytime for space, dusk for the view and the crowd.