VWatching a sunrise over Lake Hossegor from your window is a privilege of rare beauty. It is reserved for the owners or occupants of the timeless villas which surround this vestige of Adour. The dawn athletes are also rewarded.
With his head in the clouds, his feet in the ground, Jean-Pierre Lafargue, perched on the heights of Super Hossegor, one of the most popular but also the most discreet districts of the city, dominates this spectacle: “The name of the district is pretentious, it is a subdivision which was created in the 1940s, my wife and I bought land thirty-five years ago, land whose price has probably increased tenfold. »
Architect by trade, artist-painter since retirement, his life journey alone embraces the paradoxes and links that persist between Soorts on the one hand, and its marine extension of Hossegor on the other.
Nathalie Guironnet
The town center of Soorts, with its stone houses, in opposition to the Basque-Landes style of Hossegor.
Because there should be no mistake: if the name of Hossegor has passed down to world posterity thanks to surfing, it is originally a district of Soorts, the town.
A land of peasants
“There is a place that I really like in Soorts, it is the Bielle farm, located not far from the parish church. Before accompanying Hossegor on his seaside adventure, Soorts was a land of farmers, and we tend to forget it,” notes the artist, himself born in Josse.
Peasants, loggers, resin workers, sheep breeders, they were there before a handful of writers and artists decided otherwise, by settling under the pines of a strip of ocean land, at the beginning of the last century. “I am the son of a farmer, and for me, the landscapes of Soorts-Hossegor that I paint are a continuity, from the town to the beach. From a cultural, urban planning, tourist point of view, it’s not the same thing, okay. I did my job as an architect, I built some beautiful villas, I am not denigrating what Hossegor has become, since I lived there. »
The preserved garden city
Hossegor is the garden city, and on this level, the success is total. The classification of several districts as Remarkable Heritage Sites (SPR) imposes on owners a certain number of constraints intended to guarantee the preservation of a visual identity. Certainly, a few modern residences have appeared in the landscape, but it is still the trees that dominate, provided, of course, that they gain a little height.
Isabelle Louvier / SO
Rey beach in the early morning, lake side, with the Pyrenees in the background.
The Friends of Lake Hossegor, an association which has existed for twenty-three years, defends in its bulletin “Par Lac et lande” a certain idea of what Hossegor was: “From the arrival of a handful of writers in 1901: Rosny Jeune, Maxime Leroy, Paul Margueritte, and many of whom seem to have forgotten the name, they worked a lot on the state of mind, they bought houses, they gathered around them a host of writers and artists”, insisted its president Éric Gildard, during the centenary of the town, celebrated in 2023, accusing sometimes the surfers, sometimes the elected officials, of having distorted the city.
The other side of this decor, if it really exists, is above all the real estate boom, unreasonable prices and young people who can no longer find housing, even if a few projects are due to see the light of day in Soorts in the years to come. While the Observatory of Inequalities has identified the commune as being that of the region where the standard of living of the richest 10% is the highest, well-off households are no longer content to come for a few days a year in their second homes, but are settling in. This movement is not currently accompanied by an increase in the population. But over the past ten years, Hossegor has stopped hibernating, as many neighboring communities on the coast still do.
Tempo change
Valentin Houssier, owner of establishments such as the Bistro seaside and Tante Jeanne, has witnessed this change of pace in recent years: “My father bought the Bidache stone house, in the village of Soorts, I I spent my youth here. Today, we talk less and less about a season, from the point of view of attractiveness, and more and more businesses are open all year round. In the summer, there is always this contrast between the surfers, who are more and more numerous, and this wealthy, bourgeois clientele, who come to vacation, who do work in the family villa, who play golf, but who We don’t see much of the station, ultimately. »
Isabelle Louvier / SO
Valentin Houssier, the owner of the seaside Bistrot, on the edge of the lake, but also of Tante Jeanne, in the heart of town.
The new thing is also that we are increasingly looking to settle there: “Today, we have signed permanent contracts, we have fixed families for the year. We hope for a migration towards the coasts in the coming years, the demand is there. But finding accommodation remains difficult. As the owner of several businesses, I have all the difficulties in the world housing my employees, for example. »
Make no mistake, Soorts-Hossegor continues to attract summer visitors from the four corners of France: the TikTok phenomenon, summer 2021, experienced as a nightmare for some and as a blessing for others , was symptomatic of a new popularity. “I found it quite nice to welcome all these young people. The average age here is 65, so I think that’s a good thing. We may want to keep the “village” character that we find here and appreciate that the population is getting younger. »
