Salting fish goes back millennia on the Iberian Peninsula, beginning with the Phoenicians who established salt pans on the southern coast and in Alicante. Using salt is a simple and natural way of conserving fish, and especially useful for anchovies, which spoil quickly. Anchovies are salted and packed into barrels to draw away their moisture and keep bacteria from forming, but also to ferment and take on their distinctive flavors. Since the nineteenth century, the finished fillets have been commercially packed in sealed jars or flat tins to keep even longer. The difference in flavor between fresh and cured anchovies is probably greater than with any other preserved seafood.
There are two main industries of anchovies in Spain. One is from l’Escala on the Catalan Costa Brava, using Mediterranean anchovies and packing them in salt that has some black pepper added. L’Escala sits beside the important Greek and Roman ruins of Empúries, which have vestiges of ancient salting workshops. The city was abandoned in the third century, but the methods were continued by local fishermen. In the sixteenth century, the first commercial anchovy factories were established in l’Escala. The industry grew, and there were once dozens of factories in l’Escala. Today there are just two, though both make sublime anchovies using methods that have, in many ways, changed little over the centuries.
The second, larger, and for many, superior, anchovy production comes from the Cantabrian Sea, along the southern end of the Bay of Biscay. The epicenter of the industry is in Santoña. The town dates its anchovy canning industry to the arrival in 1880 of an Italian named Giovanni Vella Scaliota. Drawn by the quality of the anchovies in the bay, he settled here and eventually perfected the techniques for canning them. Salting, filleting, and canning the anchovies remains as tedious and time-consuming as it was a century ago. But, happily, the flavors remain as well.
The standard method followed in Santoña begins with catching the small, silvery fish during their prime season, from March to June, when the young anchovies are rich in fats, oils, and flavors. The fish are handled with particular care on the boats and, once brought into shore, salted as soon as possible. Workers (nearly all women) gut the fish and remove the heads, and then place them in a fan pattern into barrels with salt between each layer. With a weight on top of the open barrel, they are gently pressed for a number of months. The pressing removes the fat so that the fish can begin maturing (fermenting) and take on their characteristic heady aromas, bold flavors, and supple texture. For high-quality brands, this step lasts a minimum of eight months. The fish are then removed from the barrels, cleaned, and filleted. Any remaining bones are plucked out with tweezers. Rolled into soft cloth, the fillets are gently squeezed to remove excess moisture before being gently laid one by one into flat tins and covered with oil. The top producers pack the fillets in extra-virgin olive oil.
To fully enjoy, carefully extract the fillets from the tin, rinse in water to remove the oil, and then gently pat dry with a paper towel. Place in a shallow dish, drizzle some fresh extra-virgin olive oil over the top, and give them a generous grating of black pepper. I recommend eating anchovies on a slice of toasted country bread. The fillets should be bold, and slightly salty, but not disagreeably so.