A Lanzada Salt and Fish Works

(salinae, A Lanzada)

SalinaHispania Tarraconensis · Sanxenxo, Pontevedra, SpainBuilt 100 BCE

About

The sandy spit at A Lanzada has produced salt since at least the second century BCE, and its Roman-period remains point to a combined salting and fishing operation working the Rías Baixas' famously rich waters. It is one of at least eleven salt sites now catalogued between the Douro and Pontevedra by researchers on the Galtfish project mapping ancient Galician industry. The long occupation makes it hard to isolate exactly which building phases are Roman rather than earlier or later. Even so, this coastline is now considered the best-documented salt-production landscape in the whole empire.

What happened here

Shallow pans are cut into the flats behind a beach or a lagoon and filled at high tide through a gate. The water is walked through a sequence of pans, each shallower and saltier than the last, and the sun does the rest over the summer. In late season the crust is raked into ridges, left to drain, then carried off in baskets. The work is hot, glaring and hard on the feet, and it is done by contracted labour on a short season. Salt preserves fish and meat, cures hides and pays part of the state's revenue, so the pans are regulated and often leased from the state. A salina needs sun, wind and a tide, and it shuts down entirely when it rains.