"The game he planted was for a garden. The garden turned out to be rather large."From The Archive — Issue One
What lands in June
The complete first issue. Six sections — The Court, The Terrace, The Archive, The Coastline, The Sessions, The Season. Open to read end-to-end.
The afternoon padel arrived in Europe. A forensic account of how the first courts in Spain were actually built, drawn from the archive.
You'll be the first to know what comes after Issue One — the printed Almanac, the Sessions, the membership opening. No noise in between. We'll only write when there's something worth reading.
The Premise
There is no English-language publication for padel that takes the game seriously as culture — its origins, its rituals, the coast it came from. We're building one.
The Alborán is a padel lifestyle publication launching this June. We cover court culture and the things that surround it: the food after the match, the travel, the people who built the game in Spain, the music played in the clubhouse at six in the evening.
The first issue is set on a stretch of coastline that points at North Africa — the Alborán Sea, 36.07° N, 3.99° W. The westernmost reach of the Mediterranean. The water beside which the first padel courts in Europe were drawn out, in 1974.
You don't have to play padel to read it. You probably should anyway.
Edited by Andrew Galt and Alex Robinson. Published by Alborán Social Club Ltd, sister to PISTA 74 — the apparel brand named for the year the first padel courts in Spain were laid, in 1974.
Issue One opens with dispatches from the World Padel Summit, Barcelona — including the first episode of The Sessions, recorded on location — and from the first Premier Padel event in London.
Issue One · June 2026
The Alborán arrives this June. Issue One in your inbox the morning we publish.
See you at the club. · 36.07° N · 3.99° W