Fishing .... and music on the move

A lot of the towns on the Galician (as well as Asturian) coast are primarily fishing towns, with bits and pieces of tourist industry on the side, making use of the wonderful beaches (see previous post) and the nearby major attractions, notably Santiago de Compostela (which we visited but I have not written about here). Locally caught/raised fish and shellfish are easy to buy to cook, even on our modest budget. They are in the supermarkets, municipal markets and sometimes fresh off the boat at the harbour. This is strikingly different from Scotland where most if not all the fish is landed straight onto refrigerated lorries to be eaten elsewhere.

Some great fish on sale in the municipal market at Pontevedra; just one of about 40 stalls.

At Malpica harbour we watched a mysterious fish auction in which a small group of people followed a mumbling man as he toured around boxes of fish (e.g. 5 or so sea bream or John Dory) laid out on tables. The buyers, probably from restaurants rather than anything bigger scale, poked the fish and laid down bits of card. Somehow deals were done. Presumably this works well enough to give the people involved reasonable livelihoods and is sustainable. The fishing industry, and how it develops in different places is interesting as well as complicated; but is far beyond the scope of this blog to make sense of!

On the road we overtook a strange sight: a brass band playing in the back of a truck while it drove along, with no audience apart from other traffic. Maybe they were practicing performing-while-moving for a fiesta.