Costa Blanca
In two days, I got an e-mail from Carrefour Customer Service, in which they guaranteed that “el porcentaje de pescado extranjero en nuestra compañía es similar al de nuestros competidores.” And insofar as product origin, they were much more elucidating than Mercadona: “En cuanto al país de origen, Carrefour cumple la legislación vigente que dice que se debe indicar la zona FAO en el caso de la pesca extractiva y el país de origen en el caso de la Acuicultura.” So since all Carrefour’s signs show the FAO zone, not the country of origin, and Mercadona’s signs display the country of origin and the FAO zone, are all Carrefour’s seafood products wild caught and all Mercadona’s farm-raised, notwithstanding country of origin? It seems very improbable.
Visiting Local Fish Mongers’ in Search of Spanish Seafood Perhaps the big-box stores have corporatized, or at least, internationalized, their seafood products, which may leave small, mom-and-pop fish mongers’ as the only remaining places to find exclusively national fish and shellfish. Like Mercadona and Carrefour, local fishmongers’ containers and boxes nearly always display origin. But unlike larger retailers, they do not post signs which show the origin of their unpackaged vendibles. However, many fishmongers at local markets are willing to openly discuss product provenance. My neighborhood fishmonger, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that, “Antes la mayoría del pescado y los mariscos venían de aquí [Spain], “pero ahora vienen de todas partes.” His prawns were from Ecuador, while the cod on display was Canadian-born. And although he did have white baby clams and hake from the Homeland, I once again eyed a box of those Norwegian lobsters from Scotland! The Fishy Numbers
seafood consumption can be satisfied by fish and shellfish from European Union waters, which means that far less than two-thirds of the seafood eaten in Spain is domestic! In other words, annually Spain devours its share of EU-caught and -raised marine victuals in four months! And in 2007, a study by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) and Ocean2012 calculated that Spain imported 764,351 tons of seafood from countries outside the EU. The numbers clearly demonstrate that from the verdant estuaries of Galicia to the russet plateaus of Castile-La Mancha, from the rocky shores of Catalonia’s Costa Brava to the breezy beaches of Andalusia, non-EU maritime comestibles are plentiful. Calling all Seafood Connoisseurs What lingers unknown is whether domestic products taste better than imported ones. Is the seafood’s flavor inversely related to the distance it travels to the table? I am uncertain, to say the least. But I’ve since had those cigalas británicas many a time with my Andalusian father-in-law and they’ve always been scrumptious. Does a seafood critic equivalent to Robert Parker, the most widely-known wine writer and taster in the world today and founder and editor of the übersuccessful The Wine Advocate newsletter, exist? I am not sure, but, since the seafood market in Spain is now more internationalized than ever before, there does seem to be logic behind the Spanish misconception about the origin of much of their deep-sea munchies. In fact, my father-in-law, who is in his 60s, has said that when he was a boy, there weren’t red bell peppers, “sólo los pimientos verdes.” As red bell peppers are so commonplace in today’s Spanish cuisine, it’s nearly impossible to consider food in Spain without them. In a globalized world of rapidly mixing cultures, I suppose even something as sacred as la comida española isn’t impervious to change.
Carrefour’s e-mail was honest and correct in saying that “el consumo de alimentos está cada vez más internacionalizado, y la demanda de ciertos productos excede la oferta nacional.” It is indeed a straightforward question of supply and demand: Spain’s demand for seafood exceeds its capacity to catch and farm certain fish and shellfish. According to a 7 May 2011 article in La Vanguardia newspaper, “España Agota sus Reservas Pesqueras,” just a third of Spain’s domestic
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by Jeff Brodsky
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