Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Or that a lot of Spanish bass and bream is farmed. Or that where I live, you can't give away spider crabs, so the local fisherman send them all to Spain, they label them as centollo, and everyone thinks they are Spanish.:)

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Yes a lot of Spanish fish is farmed and a lot comes from far from the Spanish coastline. It has to because Spaniards eat so much fish - and they have to account for differnet budgets

However, if you want you can buy wild local fish, it is fairly easy. Either go to the ports where you see the fisherman coming in each day and ask them where to buy it from or go to your local pescaderia and ask for the wild local fish e.g. Cantabrian fish goes for a premium because the large waves of the Atlantic make it taste meatier/juicier. What you can buy depends on what part of the country you are in.

In the markets, much of the fish is labelled and priced according to whether it is local or imported, wild or farmed.

Just waiting for the post to say that I am lying again :)

btw, I believe a centollo is a spider crab so not sure what you point is there. Who cares what part of the Atlantic coast they come from?

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Agree, they have a huge appetite for fish, but it's just that when I read that everything is so much fresher in Spain than UK I just wonder if some people are a trifle naive. Most is no fresher than it is in UK, indeed quite a bit of "Spanish" fish comes from UK. In my area, what remains of the fishing fleet is nearly all Spanish owned trawlers and the catch goes straight into refrigerated lorries and off to Spain. Huge quantities of Scottish shellfish goes straight to Spain. In both countries locally caught fish is available caught by small local boats, but compared with total consumption the amount is small, the vast majority comes from enormous boats fishing further and further from Spain.

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Yes I agree with you. Personally when our budget allows we try and eat the shellfish from Galicia and the fish from the Cantabrian sea, because it is closer and fresher - the smaller blue fish is excellent in the mediterrenean though (boquerones, salmonetes, sardinas). But yes this is only a small proportion of the fish sold in Spain.

Basically like in any country the quality of products goes from excellent to very poor, maybe more so in Spain where many people still buy from local shops rather than in the UK where Tesco et al have standardised quality a lot more

It has taken a long time (and we are still trying) to find good quality restaurants and shops in the CDS. It was much easier to do this in Asturias and Barcelona. You have to go where the locals have shopped/eaten for years, then I find the quality to be superb. The city of Malaga is the place to go!

I guess the difference in the UK is there is not quite the tradition of eating good food. I agree with other posters that food in the UK has improved no end in recent years, but personally I feel underwhelmed by the identical supermarkets and chain restaurants and flowery descriptive menus of the independent places

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

So buy your fish (if you can) from the portr ... or off the boats when they come in, much as we do sometimes. You cant really get fresher.

Maybe this is an example of what I was saying about taking care where you buy foods?

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

When I was running my freight business, one of our regular contracts was bringing in fridge boxes from Bergen to Newcastle with Color Line and then sending them up to Scotland for local distribution.

(We used to then bring them back down to the UK and re load them with clothing to go back to Bergen which maybe has something to do with why people say Norwegians always smell of fish)

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

[QUOTE=cricketman;7899548]Yes a lot of Spanish fish is farmed and a lot comes from far from the Spanish coastline. It has to because Spaniards eat so much fish - and they have to account for differnet budgets

However, if you want you can buy wild local fish, it is fairly easy. Either go to the ports where you see the fisherman coming in each day and ask them where to buy it from or go to your local pescaderia and ask for the wild local fish e.g. Cantabrian fish goes for a premium because the large waves of the Atlantic make it taste meatier/juicier. What you can buy depends on what part of the country you are in.

In the markets, much of the fish is labelled and priced according to whether it is local or imported, wild or farmed.

Just waiting for the post to say that I am lying again :)

btw, I believe a centollo is a spider crab so not sure what you point is there. Who cares what part of the Atlantic coast they come from?[/QUOTE

I hope no body takes the bait or we will go round and round

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

:D :rofl:

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Benidorm, like anywhere has its good and bad points and that of course depends entirely on who you are and what your tastes are...............everyone sees it differently.

Hastings for instance used to be a very run down place,but i have noticed since moving here from the so called stockbroker belt Guildford in Surrey, which is very expensive, with lots of crime, including violence/murder/drugs etc, that Hastings is a very friendly, clean, great place to live. There is a new station, college, all the front is much better than Brighton, clean, newly renovated/painted properties and the old town draws so many tourists because of its history and great shops/restaurants, the beaches are many and clean - and no i dont work for the local tourist board - and property values have increased dramatically since i moved here 7 yrs or so ago, as they would with all the improvements...............:thumbsup:

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

I'm with you on this one JDR, agree completely.

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Dam - It's a bugger when that happens :rofl:
Sometimes Gin falls in my cart from time to time :rolleyes:

DSB.

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

It's all getting a bit crabby in here :blink:

DSB.

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Here we go with the "Hastings" again Jaque :rofl:
I prefered it when you wrote the short stories, or a sonnet or two :thumbsup::thumbsup:

DSB.

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

......lol! - when my youngest son went to school at Christs hospital, SUSSEX:lol: - at end of summer term, they had the beating the retreat as they had a band rather like the royal marines, who trained them, well their last thing to play as they marched off was "good old Sussex by the Sea" - and the ones who werent playing wind instruments used to Sing "you can tell them all that they know f--- all at Sussex by the Sea"...............:lol:

by the way - its sunny today in HASTINGS:thumbsup:.................whats the spanish weather doing?

Re: Are people on pensions staying?
 

Not sure - I'm still overseas at the moment :frown:
Will be back November, hopefully the grockles have left by then :huh:

Cheers;
DSB.