The appearance of the railway meant a revolution in the consumption of fresh fish.

-Each Spanish consumes an average of 35 kilograms of fish a year, above average European consumption, that is 22.1 kg/year, and well above consumption half of global fish, with 17.1 kilograms/year

-Catholic religion set dates determined as days of fast and abstinence, days in which the consumption of fish was the most common alternative to the consumption of meat and fat from animals mammals

-imported cod, cheap product for humble classes but that had to be imported as a whole for more than two hundred years because of the loss of political power and military of the King of Spain

Bilbao, February 2012.- each Spanish consumes an average of 35 kilograms of fish a year, i.e., above average European consumption, that is 22.1 kg/year, and well above consumption half of global fish, with 17.1 kilograms per year. The figures make clear the weight of fish in our diet. From that reality, Francisco Dehesa, director of the area of Social Action of the City Council of Bilbao and veterinary Vice-President of the Academy of medical sciences of Bilbao gave last Thursday a Conference led by title marketing of fish in the 18th and 19th centuries ”, nestled within the Humanities week XXXIXorganized by the Academy of medical sciences of Bilbao this year under the generic slogan seas and oceans ”.

Recalls the specialist to since prehistoric times, man has incorporated the fish to their diet, which shows the specific weight of this food in the evolution of the human being ”. Francisco Dehesa warns, this historic route, carried weight by religious precepts, circumstances which have been very important in the evolution of food in different regions of the world. Related to this aspect, it should be recalled that the Catholic religion set certain dates as days of fasting and abstinence, days in which the consumption of fish was the most common alternative to the consumption of meat and fat from animals mammals ”.

On the basis of the relationship between religious norms and consumption of fish, the specialist performs an approximation to the diet of the Spaniards to understand a phenomenon characteristic of the same: consumption of imported cod, cheap product for humble classes but that it had to be imported as a whole for more than two hundred years due to loss of power polpolitical and military of the Spanish monarchy. This species of fish, from the Nordic Seas close to the Arctic Circle, was part of the diet of the Spaniards, especially of the of inland, with much more difficult access to fresh fish to the inhabitants of coastal ”.

The director of Social Action of the City Council of Bilbao area made a cursory review to different types of conservation of the fish before it, at the end of the 19th century, was discovered electricity, fact which allowed the great development of the refrigeration industry, that initially did not yet have that energy. Many forms of conservation of fish of past centuries remain today, as it is the case with the Marinades and salted fish such as cod, salted and pressed fish like sardines, dried or canned. However, other ways to conserve the fish for sale are gone, as it is the case with hake in the form of cecial ”, the specialist stresses.

The form of transport of food at the time determined to a large extent the type of treatment that should suffer the fish to not spoil during long transport towards the interior of the peninsula. Had special importance the transport of fish on the back of horses, mostly mules, in the decades before the appearance of the railway, progress which constituted a genuine economic and social phenomenon, which radically changed the marketing of fish, allowing access to fresh fish populations which until then had been known only by a very limited number of fluvial and marine species fresh ”.

In line with this reality of consumption of fish in Spanish populations flourished municipal markets as genuine opportunities for the marketing of fisheries products in cities and Spanish villas, where different municipal health standards have marked the pattern. Products such as hake, cod, tuna and sea bream, without forgetting other more modest but equally important in our diet and our gastronomic tradition such as sardines and anchovies, have become common products in the diets of today ”.