
It's hardly surprising - over three quarters of The Kingdom of Spain's population lives within 50 miles of the sea and, with the exceptions of Madrid, Seville and Zaragoza, all the major centres of population density are on the coast. Move Canberra to Alice Springs and Spain would demographically resemble Australia.
Of course when we talk about seafood and Spain, our thoughts turn to the northern coast line - to Galicia and The Basque Country and to Asturias and Cantabria in-between. But there's almost nowhere in Spain where fish and shellfish aren't an important part of the regional cuisine. Even in most of the landlocked autonomous communities we find river fish and crustaceans playing an important role. You get a good idea of the importance of seafood to the Spanish when you discover that the world's second largest fish market after Tsukiji in Tokyo is Mercamadrid, with a covered surface area of 42,000 m² and annual sales of 132m kilos of seafood. What's notable about that is that Madrid is over 300km from the sea!
When Spain celebrates something, it does so by building. The architectural traditions of the Basques, the Catalans and the Islamic conquerors of south and central Spain have brought some of the most spectacular structures to be found anywhere in Europe. Elsewhere in the world such excesses may be confined to palaces and grand houses of culture, celebrating monarchy and opera. In Spain, a stunning edifice of steel, glass and ceramics is just as likely to celebrate the cheese, the sausage and the shrimp.

In the city of València is just such a celebratory structure, standing proud against the skyline adjacent to
La Lonja de la Seda, the ancient Silk Market.
El Mercado Central de València is a stunning piece of Catalan modernist architecture, initiated in 1914 and opened fourteen years later. The market is an 8,000m
2 expanse of steel and glass decorated with typically colourful Valèncian ceramic tiles. Built by architects Alejandro Soler March and Francisco Guardia Vial who trained in Barcelona with the iconic
Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the art nouveau building even includes the colors of
the Senyera regional flag (the base of the modern Aragonese, Catalan, Valèncian and Balearic communities) in its windows.

A few weeks ago I visited central València for lunch at
Restaurante Torrijos (more to come shortly). Having arrived an hour or so early, what better way to whet my appetite for the feast to come than to gaze upon some of the city's freshly caught aquatic residents at El Mercado Central. The seafood section of the market is vast, so I only captured a small part of what was on offer. Click on individual slides for descriptions of the seafood on display.
Thanks to Kike@ and birdbath for the structural photos of the market. All seafood stall photos by me.