El Niño, the brand that marked a whole generation, returns with Bershka.

In the 2000s, El Niño marked the zeitgeist of a generation. Its unmistakable logo: an angry creature that adorned the T-shirts of half the young people in Spain, became the emblem of a generation, and a brand that was born especially for surfers became widely used by the bakalas of Spain. Today, when it seemed that the brand was more dead than alive, El Niño rises from the ashes with Bershka.

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The history of the brand begins in 1999 in Tarifa. Its founders, the German businessman Herbert Neumann and the Basque graphic designer Andoni Galdeano, moved to this city to dedicate themselves to surfing and decided to create a fashion brand that reflected their passion. In fact ‘El Niño’ takes its name from the Levante wind, which is what attracts surfers from all over the world to these beaches. The two created a very large community, loving water sports, which led to the opening of their first point of sale in Tarifa. Afterwards, the brand gained popularity by appearing in TV series, especially Disney, which boosted its expansion almost without investment. Surprisingly, its success attracted not only sportsmen but also the canis of the moment. It seems incredible that a brand that was born with the purpose of portraying the spirit of Tarifa windsurfing was a staple of the bakala closet at the beginning of the century.

In 2002, El Niño consolidated its presence in the market by sealing a licensing agreement with Javier Guerra’s company, El Secreto del Mar. This agreement allowed the brand to expand rapidly and, at its peak, El Niño had seventy points of sale in El Corte Inglés, in addition to stores in various Spanish cities such as Madrid, Granada, Seville, Bilbao and San Sebastián. The brand reached a distribution network of more than 800 multi-brand points of sale, making it an icon of urban fashion in the country.

However, its popularity began to wane, and the company, which acquired the production and distribution rights to El Niño in 2002, faced financial difficulties and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2014. This event marked a turning point for the brand, which was forced to close and liquidate its operations. The license then passed into the hands of the Portuguese OSDM (O Segrego do Mar), but El Niño would no longer have the same presence as in the early 2000s.

Despite this, his legacy is still alive among nostalgic lovers of Y2K aesthetics, proof of this is that in late 2022 early 2023, El Niño experienced a resurgence and even the brand itself launched a ‘remember’ collection, reviving the T-shirts that filled our drawers when we were 15 years old, thus awakening the bug of many of us who wore the angry boy in our high school folders and our clothes. And Rosalía seems to belong to the club of the faithful followers of El Niño, since on February 2, 2023 she was seen wearing a T-shirt of the brand in one of the posts she included in her dump.

Now, BERSHKA recaptures this spirit of nostalgia from the Y2K era and creates with El Niño a collection that tells the story of Spanish urban fashion, bringing back the memories and styles that defined an era. All garments and accessories from the collection in collaboration with El Niño are available at www.bershka.com and in selected BERSHKA physical stores.