When you approach the small town of Santoña from the east, leaving behind the heaving resort of Laredo (where a 5km beach is packed with inhabitants from nearby Bilbao) the first thing you notice is that it appears to be a quaint old town full of traditional buildings. The salt marsh that surrounds Santoña is a natural park that is well known as a seabird habitat. Santoñans are able to sit outside for their aperitivos, stare across the bay at built-up Laredo and live their lives without bother from the hordes of city tourists that visit other seaside towns.
What makes Santoña famous is anchovies. Santoña is one of the biggest processors of preserved anchovies in Spain, and the products are widely considered to be the best in the world.
The industry is said to have been started by an Italian who had traveled to the region in search of a new source of anchovies and found the ones fished off the coast of Santoña to be better than anywhere else. He decided to stay in Santoña and set up a business (today under the brand name Doña Dolores) for filleting and canning the salted anchovies there rather than doing the job back in Italy. With that, the town’s fish canning industry was born. The superb raw material combined with excellent Spanish olive oil created a sublime product and Cantabrian anchovies are still considered the best in the world.
At first, the anchovy fillets were covered in butter but that was soon replaced by Spain’s abundant olive oil. Other than that, the process of salting, filleting and canning has hardly changed and now Santoña has an industrial estate near its port dedicated to the anchovy processing industry.
One of the smaller canneries is El Capricho owned by brothers César and Jose-Luis Iglesias, ‘we’re not related to Julio or Enrique,’ beams César, ‘but Julio’s Dad used to buy our anchovies and would call us ‘cousins’ when he phoned to order.’
El Capricho was opened more than thirty-three years ago by the Iglesias’ brothers’ father and uncle. An electrician and a builder by trade, they regularly gave presents of anchovies to clients and were lamenting their decreasing quality. ‘One Christmas,’ says Jose-Luis, ‘they decided they were going to go into the business themselves and sell the best quality anchovies. It was one of those conversations that everyone has after a big meal and a lot of wine, but a few months later my uncle went to see my dad with a serious business plan and they set up El Capricho.’