The port of Isla Cristina (Spanish: Puerto de Isla Cristina), belonging to the maritime province of Huelva on the Spanish Costa de la Luz, is the port with the highest turnover in fresh fish in Andalusia and one of the first in tonnage and importance of catches at national level. It is one of the 23 main fishing ports in Spain designated by the FAO. It exports its products to all of Spain and much of Europe. It was originally developed as a way to support the fishing activity of the first settlers in the area in the 18th century. It has grown steadily in extension, reaching over 640,000 m² (64 ha) in 2009 after its latest expansion, although not in terms of the landing of catches. The 1920s marked the highest number of fish landed with almost 16,000 tons in a single year, highlighting the tuna almadraba. As a sardine port it has been, for decades, one of the first in Spain and the traditional species of the port.
The modernization of the fleet and the search for new fishing techniques have been a constant during its development, introducing innovations at a national level in fishing gear such as the tarrafa, at the end of the 19th century. Already in the 20th century, the reconversion of the sector reduced the importance of the port to give it to fish farms, while R&D activity was added to the sector with innovation centers such as CIT-Garum.
History through fishing
Background and beginnings
Initially, around 1724, a rudimentary port in the area of the "Barra de la Tuta" for mooring and landing of goods was the logical and necessary consequence of the arrival, from the early years of the 18th century (perhaps earlier), of fishing artisans from the Levante and even France. These fishermen were attracted by the fishing of sardines and tuna mainly, and other species of commercial interest, returning after the season to their ports of origin.
This periodic transfer of seasonal workers marks the moment when fishing activity began on the Barra de la Tuta. Until the 1750s, the fisheries developed in the area in the form of colonies with frequent summer activity, dependent on the ports of origin in the Spanish Levante. Over time and thanks to the abundance of resources and the need to establish a more secure port, these colonies became stable ports with a permanent population. This was the origin of towns such as Punta del Moral, La Higuerita (renamed in 1834 as Isla Cristina) or Punta del Caimán (currently a suburb of Isla Cristina). The 1755 Lisbon earthquake is the milestone that provoked the need to settle in a point conveniently protected from natural hazards and, incidentally, to look for a place where to obtain better tax conditions. The place chosen was the island of La Higuerita, protected by a sandy coastline, La Barra, a few hundred meters from La Tuta to the northeast, in the area of marismas and estuaries existing between Ayamonte and La Redondela, and free, at least in principle, from the aforementioned tributary administrations. These conditions made this island the ideal place to which the bulk of the settlements would be moved.
Commercial independence and fishing between the 18th and 19th centuries
Its protected strategic location, along with some political events promoted by the Marquis of Pombal in Portugal (see history of Vila Real de Santo António) and thanks to jurisdictional concessions from Charles III, led to a strong development of fishing activity in this port from the early years of its formation.
At the end of the 18th century, the number of traditional boats was still important, with more than 60 jábegas (the largest traditional fishing boat in the area). However, 30 years later, in 1824, there were only between 24 and 26 jábegas in the province of Huelva, of which between 18 and 20 belonged to the port of Isla Cristina. The jábegas were the main means for catching sardines, a species that stands out especially in this port. The bous gear brought by Valencian fishermen to the Gulf of Cadiz, which was not very selective due to trawling, ruined the traditional activities (among them, the aforementioned jábegas), although they continued to be used (like gillnetting, still in use) and caused the abandonment of a large number of traditional fishermen at this time.
There was one or at most two almadrabas in the coasts of Huelva, which alternated or contemporaneously, were the almadraba of La Tuta and La Mojarra. Even at this time there was no demand for further progress in these modern methods of extraction, as they were technically expensive and costly, making the art of the almadraba still unprofitable for a society that was not prepared for it because of the intricacies of the guilds and inadequate regulations. The catches of these almadraba gave more supply than the population needed to consume and in some occasions they were unprofitable.0
Industrialization
With the arrival of the canning industry, demand increased enormously, since the fish did not need to be consumed immediately, but could be preserved, stored and transported long distances for later consumption. Little by little, the situation changed and in 1861 the catches achieved in 1831 were tripled.
Around 1865, the galleon (known in Galicia as traíña) arrived from Galicia,The first galleon was brought by the salted fish industrialist from Isla Cristina, Sebastián Romeu Casañes, who created one of the most important canning companies of the entire South Atlantic coast, especially strengthened by his son and heir, Serafín Romeu Portas, first Count of Barbate and Manager of the Consorcio Nacional Almadrabero after its incorporation in 1928. which would eventually replace the jábegas, even with resistance from its former users, thanks to a more entrepreneurial conception of the sector, the disestablishment of salt as a state monopoly and a bonanza in the fishing industry in those years. This business conception grew in complexity, exploited intensive fishing more and more, and triggered a conflict of interests with Portugal (since the galleons, with their freedom of movement, allowed them to move away from the coast) that would not be overcome until the European fishing framework came into force.
It was a salting businessman from Isla Cristina, Martín Cabet, the promoter of a new gear that he adapted to the galleon brought to Spain by himself from Boston, the tarrafa (purse seine gear dedicated to catching sardines). Martin Cabet adapted it perfectly to the ship, propelled by oars (and later adapted it for steam propulsion) and with its larger dimensions, better maneuverability and allowing sets in deeper waters, it will overcome the restrictions imposed by Portugal in its jurisdictional waters without violating the 1883 treaty, fishing in its own waters without navigating them. In other parts of the province, it was preferred to trade with Portuguese sardines instead of fishing them, which reduced the dynamism and prevented the modernization of those ports, in addition to the risks involved, since Portugal also had an important canning industry.
Relaunching of the almadraba
Of the first almadrabas,There are documents that recognize the installation of almadrabas on the coast of Onuba during the Roman administration. Subsequently, the art was lost and was not recovered until the Middle Ages, when the Duke of Medina Sidonia was granted a monopoly in the Gulf of Cadiz for the creation of eight almadrabas, two of which will eventually fall on the coast of La Higuerita competition. After the end of the monopoly, the almadrabas were managed by the almadraba guilds of the 19th century, which finally formed the Consorcio Nacional Almadrabero, whose first president was the islander Serafín Romeu, and whose dissolution took place in 1973. granted in monopoly in the 13th century to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the almadraba of La Tuta, dating from 1812, was the most constant. By 1888 there were at least two in Isla Cristina, the aforementioned and that of Las Cabezas, set that same year, in addition to the almadraba of La Mojarra which ceased to be set. At the end of the century, the sardine became more important than tuna; however, Isla Cristina still contributed more than 91% of the total catch of the province of Huelva in 1892 (5,598,075 kilos without counting the tuna).
In the 1880s, the greatest activity related to fishing took off, the tuna almadraba and the canning industry linked to it, which reached its splendor in the 1920s. At that time, the port of Isla Cristina had managed to agglutinate before it a stable population of 10,000 inhabitants (comparable at the time with cities like Avilés or Irun) and had experienced a strong industrialization of fishing activities associated, producing tuna alone, several thousand kilos per day and generating thousands of jobs directly or indirectly, besides having real industrial colonies in several points of the coast of the Gulf of Cadiz (concentrated in a few families), as was the case of Rota, with factories of up to 600 people of the Zamorano and Romeu families. The almadraba business began to transcend the local or regional sphere of influence, with most of the almadrabas in the gulf and several Moroccan ones passing into the hands of industrialists from the island (and also from Ayamonte).
Blue Gold; tuna as the main source of wealth
The technological development of the time largely permitted this economic flourishing based on tuna, as described by Bellón in 1926:
This development refers mainly to the industrialization of canning (mainly tuna canning, but also sardines) and took place mainly in the factories of Serafín Romeu and Pérez y Feu in Isla Cristina and the latter also in Ayamonte. The price of the technology at the time was somewhat negligible, if we compare it with the costs of the canon or the replacement of the material of the almadraba. In the 1910s, the labor force was reduced due to the mechanization of the almadraba boats, which lowered production costs. Taking into account that the years of the First World War and the post-war period were years of a strong increase in exports and in which the prices of canned tuna suffered strong rises, the investment in infrastructures and the improvement of the facilities were necessary and convenient.
Of the four large canning companies in the Gulf of Cadiz, which accounted for practically the entire national sector; Viuda de Zamorano, Serafín Romeu, José Ramón Curbera and Compañía Almadrabera Española, the first two were from the islands.The factories in Tarifa and Barbate canned impressive quantities of tuna caught by line in the strait. These companies were a clear example of a corporate group, controlling the entire process from extraction. The average daily production capacity of the Cádiz almadraba-canning companies, that is, canned tuna (generally in the hands of businessmen from Isla Cristina or Ayamonte) exceeded 50,000 kg. in addition to a similar amount of salted tuna. In a single campaign they could produce up to 15,000 tunas (approximately 1,200,000 kilograms of canned tuna). In addition, the industrial colonies owned by Viuda de Zamorano and Romeu had schools, a small hospital, a commissary, lodgings; a whole city to house sometimes more than 600 workers and their families in the Real de las almadrabas.
The following table illustrates the years of greatest fishing activity and the beginning of its decline. In comparison, in 2008 almost 7,700,000 kilos passed through the Llotja. The data on landed fish have reached our days thanks to the fact that they were published at the time in the island newspaper La Higuerita.
The blue gold eraYearFish catch in kilograms191912,204,500192010,826,000192113,644,000192211,750,000192315,621,50019249,194,500Source: Origins of Industrial Fishing in the province of Huelva. Segundo Ríos.