Spaniards are hooked by a deep and ancient passion

Fishing 2/ anatomy of a national obsession

THE MOST potent symbol of Spain, one that strikes closer to the Iberian heart than the matador and arouses deeper emotions than a flamenco guitar, is - or should be - the refrigerated fish lorry. Every night they wind their way through rugged mountain passes and hurtle across the high plains to bring fresh fish to the table of every Spaniard, who on average eats 40 kilos of fish a year, far more than any other European and twice as much as the British and the French. By means of this incessant nocturnal traffic, Spain's proud and disparate peoples are united by their gastronomic passion.

Spaniards fish more than any other nation in Europe, and eat more fish than any other nation except Japan and Korea. Huge trawlers voyage for up to four months in the North Atlantic or the seas off Argentina and Peru, salting and freezing their catches on board, while smaller boats venture out for two or three days for a catch to sell on the harbourside. Spain imports more than 800,000 tons of fish a year (264,000 tons from Europe) including live crabs and lobsters from Scotland, and has a huge, technologically advanced preserving and canning industry.

Spain's passion for fish goes back to the sixth century BC, according to Pablo Cardenas, a historian of Spanish cuisine and partner in a private catering firm in Madrid. "The area around Cadiz was settled by the Phoenicians and became the main supplier to the Romans of garun, a pungent black paste of dried and salted fish," he said.

Basques were fishing cod off Newfoundland in the 15th century and archaeological evidence shows that fresh fish was sold in Madrid - 400 miles from the sea - in the 16th century. Most people lived near Spain's 5,000-mile coastline, where the harshness of the terrain ruled out agriculture. Those who colonised the interior traded agricultural produce for seafood. Miguel Garcia, the owner of one of Madrid's smartest fish restaurants, La Trainera, said: "They threw salt over the fish to keep it fresh, or in the winter they chilled it with snow.

"This is is how my great grandfather, who lived hundreds of miles from the sea, built up our fish business in Madrid. When the railways came, he just collected the fish from the station. Today, many inland regions consume more fresh fish than on the coast."

Last Friday lunchtime, my local zinc-countered cafe offered shellfish soup, grilled trout, grilled swordfish and tuna pie. You could have a tapa of anchovies or mussels in vinegar, and a mixed salad, which in Spain usually contains tuna.

My local covered market has 20 specialised fish stalls. Yesterday morning a woman in a black headscarf dipped into a bucket of grey-green baby crabs from Galicia, shovelling them by the handful into a customer's white plastic bag. There were tiny silvery sardines and anchovies from the south, scarlet shrimps and carmine lobsters, handsome sea bass, bream and sole from the north, acres of pale frozen squid and octopus rings and stiff slabs of salt cod.

Fish is not cheap in Spain. It is more expensive than meat. It is also, as a Spanish friend pointed out, more time-consuming to prepare. "Yet it is the first thing we offer to our babies," she said, "they grow up with it right from the start."

Fish is very good for you and rich in protein, she added. But this argument, in a country where almost everybody seems to smoke like a chimney, tank up on caffeine, stay up half the night and drive like a maniac, seems hardly convincing as an explanation for a national obsession.

"It's a good thing we do eat so much fish," Mr Cardenas said, "otherwise with the life we lead we'd be dead, instead of being among the longest- living people in Europe."