Calpe and siestas...

While we were in Spain, we visited Calpe which is just up the coast from Benidorm. It is a beautiful city tucked in between the sea and the mountains. Once an ancient fishing village Calpe now has about 20.000 inhabitants and boasts enchanting views of the rock of Ifach. Ifach rises to 332 metres. The Phoenicians called the Rock of Ifach the "Northern Rock" to distinguish it from the "Southern Rock" at Gibraltar. Today it is a nature park. It was amazing to look down the beach to see a huge chuck of rock sticking up out of the sea.

Another place of interest was the fishing dock. We could see the boats coming into the docks in mid-afternoon. The boat were always trailed by huge flocks of seagulls making the boast look like they were pulling clouds behind them. Once at the dock, the fisherman unloaded blue trays full of sea creatures. There were squid, flounder, eels, shrimp, lobsters, snapper, and a lot of other types of fish I did not recognize. I watched a man on a boat preparing a tray of squid. He had a wooden, cylindrical club (kind of like a rolling pin only without the handles and much wider in diameter) and he would use it to pound the squid prior to putting them in the trays. The squids were certainly alive when they were unloading the trays, so I am guessing that the clubbing was to stun them.

After being unloaded, the fish went into a warehouse, where it was put on a conveyor belt, identified by a man sitting at a computer next to the conveyor belt, then weighed. The trays would travel further down the conveyor belt which ran between two section of seats where the buyers would sit and bid on the seafood. A big board would announce the price per kilo and the buyer who purchased the tray of seafood. The trays moved further down the conveyor belt where a man would shovel ice into it and a machine would drop a ticket into it identifying the buyer. Then the trays were off loaded, sorted according to buyer, packed with more ice and then loaded into trucks where the seafood was taken to supermarkets and restaurants. The whole process was amazing to watch! The kids enjoyed watching the squid try to make their escape. They reached their arms over the edge of the trays and slide out onto the conveyor belt. Many squid were picked up and pitched back into their trays throughout the process.

After viewing this process, we had no doubt that the seafood in our paella in Calpe was as fresh as you can buy.