It would be fair to say that the Spanish like their tuna.  Not just the fancy kind now so popular in trendy restaurants in the UK and around the world where they vie to serve it as near to raw as possible and not get it sent back but also the packed lunch staple – the tin.

I sent my posh tuna back once in the Restaurant at the Ritz in Madrid.  I can stomach almost anything but raw fish is not on my list of likes.  If Chef had even managed to show it the grill I would have been happy but this baby just leapt out the sea and straight on to my plate.  When the waiter returned with the manager
to assure me that they were killing it in the kitchen and it would be back out having had a quick tanning session in their very expensive grill I felt obliged to apologise for being a plebe unable to chow my way through a bit of raw dead fish.  Much to my surprise the manager assured me that as we lived in the Costa de la Luz we would know better than their Chef how to cook tuna.  I was not sure if this was a great compliment to us or a bit of a giveaway that they had the boy from the burger bar on the corner across the park doing a stand in shift for them as things were a bit quiet that night and head chef had the night off.  Things were a bit slack in all fairness as our fellow diners were an elderly gentleman with a leather mini skirted girl of around 18 – yes I think she was  a lady of the night and he said they had no time for dessert as they were in a rush -not sure if the clock was ticking on her meter or his Viagra meter but they left in a hurry and a group of slightly drunk and very obnoxious Americans who told the Sommelier that his wine list “sucked”.   So much for meeting a better class of people in posh hotels.

Anyway as I waited for them to kill Moby and stick him back on my plate with the finely turned vegetables we listened to the manager waxing lyrical about the fabulous tuna the sea around our part of the coast threw out and how it could not be beaten.

He was indeed right as a friend of ours who is a restaurant owner and chef in Murcia has an older brother who owns several fishing boats here on the Costa de la Luz which take part in the Almadraba  every year and all his catch goes to Japan.  Those clever little chaps who never manage to be original in thought but always manage to develop other people´s  products to the nth degree and get rich from it.

You are now probably wondering what the Almadraba fishing method is?  Well,  it is an ancient fishing method dating back to certainly the Romans and maybe even the Phoenicians as it appears to be shown in some of their works of art.  It happens between April and August when the tuna are moving through the Straits of Gibraltar to their ancient mating grounds.  Having spent the winter in the cold North Atlantic waters the tuna fancy a bit of sun and sex, as you do,  and make the long voyage to the Mediterranean sea to sunbath and mate -not dissimilar to many a British tourist.

Without boring you too much,   they lay long sections of netting 34 metres deep and about 3 miles off the coast. The nets are weighted by large anchors and floated at the top by cork buoys.  The word Almadraba means “place of killing” in the Arabic language.   They wait for the tuna to enter the area and then with the fishing boats pull the nets to form a circle capturing the tuna in the middle.  If you are an animal lover the next bit is not very nice as some brave local lads then kill the tuna with long knives turning the water red with their blood.  Not sure why they are called “brave” as I have never seen a hooligan tuna run up the beach and give a fisherman a good kicking but maybe I need to keep my eyes open more.

Anyway the end result is delicious and I personally think the man at the Ritz is right and you don´t get any better tuna than from our sea here on the Costa de la Luz so if you are in the area try some or at least buy yourself a can and have a good old Andalucian tuna salad.  Bon appétit!