Just days later, however, Carlist troops laid siege to the city of Bilbao, holding her citizens prisoner. They survived largely thanks to the mix-up. Gurtubay got rich. And because Basque housewives had nothing else to eat, they invented a seemingly endless stream of new recipes for the fish, creating one of the most sophisticated cuisines in Spain while they were at it.
They may have been one of the nation's most fortuitous experiences of salt cod, but it was by no means its first. Norwegian stockfish (the difference between stockfish and salt cod is that stockfish is dried cod, as opposed to dried-salted cod), was important as far back as the 10th century. Basque whalers and the Spanish conquistadors both filled their ships with the nutritious, everlasting flesh of salted cod which sustained them as they discovered the rich fishing grounds of Newfoundland and eventually the great American continent. But it was only after these discoveries that Europeans began to seriously exploit this resource, with the Spanish, French and Portuguese heading the fleets and getting rich on the proceeds.
The Western Mediterranean, meanwhile, developed an incredible appetite for salt cod, or bacalao as it is known in Spain. It was the perfect food for a nation deeply entrenched in the policies of a dominant Catholic Church, where meat-free days were still observed. As the Catalan chef and author Domènec Moli famously pointed out: "Bacallà is, in our society, the only positive result of Lent."
Because it would be easily transported to all corners of the country and deep into mountainous regions without refrigeration, it was in many was the perfect culinary discovery. Even today, Spaniards from Seville to San Sebastian will tell you that salt cod is infinitely superior to its rather insipid fresh counterpart, while the neighbouring Portuguese consider it their 'fiel amigo' (faithful friend).
Politically, of course, fishing for cod has become a contentious issue, with intense and prolonged fighting over fishing rights on the one hand, and conservation concern on the other. When the Basques first started fishing cod in earnest (its low fat content made it more amenable to salting than the whale) the creatures could grow to as much as six feet long, and stocks on the Grand Banks were said to be such that the fishermen could walk across the seas on their backs. Today, stocks are alarmingly depleted—populations around New England, for example, have dropped by between 20 and 25 percent since 2002—and the US-based Ocean Conservancy says that "adopting stronger cod conservation measures is critical to ending overfishing and protecting the fishing communities that depend on them." Conservation measures already include a ban on fishing when cod are spawning, and the creation of no-trawling zones.
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