A perfect storm threatens the future of fish farms in Catalonia and Spain as a whole. The data is worrying: in Catalonia, one in four establishments have disappeared in the last six years, according to a report by the Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) drawn up on behalf of the Catalan Fishermen’s Guild. “We were surprised by the results. We already knew we were bad, but not at this level”, laments Àlex Goñi, president of the Guild.
The collective fights to stay afloat in the face of the arrival of different threats, some of which are shared with small businesses in general. According to the Guild, neighborhood fishmongers are falling victim to fierce competition from supermarkets, the fall in consumer purchasing power, a change in eating habits, the lack of generational support, high bureaucracy and fiscal pressure.
It is significant that between high prices and changing habits, such as cooking less at home or opting for simple dishes, fish consumption has fallen by more than 10% in the last ten years in both Catalonia and Spain.
“We are headed for definitive closure if we don’t get the business back in a year. The margins are very low and the income has nothing to do with what we were getting a few years ago”, lament Manel Tort and Maria Redrado, a married couple who run the last fish shop to open in the Poble Sec neighborhood, where decades ago there were six establishments
The phenomenon can spread throughout the territory. In Catalonia, 24% of points of sale have disappeared between 2015 and 2021, the latest available results reducing the number of open fishmongers in this community to 1,473. The fall would not be understood without knowing the characteristics of the guild, made up of a network of micro-companies, which employ three to four workers and invoice around half a million euros a year. Their situation is increasingly precarious. “We had come to have three fishmongers, but the financial crisis and the demanding regulations forced us to close the shutters on two establishments. It was not profitable and even less so if we had to hire salaried workers. Then the business would be absolute ruin”, laments Tort.
According to the Gremi de Peixaters, it is not reasonable that small neighborhood fishmongers have to face the same legal requirements as large supermarket chains. “We are subject to the same bureaucracy and the same health controls. It’s a lot of pressure. Every day we have to record the temperature of the fridges and share the cleaning products we use in our store”, says the fishmonger, who remembers that the regulations are more demanding in the case of having salaried workers because it requires, for example , to have changing rooms in premises where space is usually limited.
As shown in the graph, taken from the CSIC report, supermarkets are gaining share compared to traditional fishmongers, which for years have represented less than 20% of fish sales to the final consumer.
Bureaucracy is not the only reason that explains this phenomenon. “It is impossible to compete against establishments that open twelve hours a day and that have the resources to hire staff to open even on Sundays”, laments Tort, who calls for more time control not only to compete under the same conditions but to reconcile the family area
The wholesale fish trade also shares these concerns. Àngel Máñez, president of the Mercat Central del Peix de Mercabarna Wholesalers Guild, warns of the harm caused by the large chains: “They have more power to negotiate and have begun to dispense with distributors like us. In recent years, we know that they are already going directly to negotiate with the fish shops in the north of the country and abroad”.
Máñez assures that, in the last ten years, Mercabarna has seen fifteen distributors disappear and that now only 28 operate. “Ours is a hard job, which involves being cold and wet during the wee hours of the morning. For this reason, there is no generational relief”, reasons the businessman, who shares this reflection with the owners of neighborhood fishmongers.
The closure of companies linked to fish would not be understood without talking about the prices of the product. With relatively moderate inflation after a few years of very high inflation – in 2023, the CPI for fish was 4% compared to 10% in 2022 -, Goñi admits that “the perception that many consumers have is that fish is a expensive product”.
However, the president believes that “this is not entirely true, as there are varieties that are affordable for all pockets”. The problem, he maintains, is that the consumer knows less and less about the offer available. “It is very common for the consumer who goes to the fishmonger to only order salmon, monkfish and hake, fish that are precisely not among the most affordable”.
At the same time, the collective recognizes that the fall in the purchasing power of the consumer, especially the young, is a threat to a product that has never been cheap, when compared to animal proteins, such as chicken. For this reason, the Guild calls for a reduction in VAT, which is now at 10%. “It should be considered a basic necessity product and be taxed at 4% or even be exempt, as has happened with bread”, says Goñi.
The sector is also threatened by sociological factors, such as a change in the habits of the working population. “People cook less and less at home and when they have free time they prefer to go to a restaurant or prepare simple dishes”, laments the president of the Guild, which celebrates the campaigns of the administrations that encourage the consumption of fish and local trade.
The fall in purchasing power and the change in the habits of the population have led to a gradual reduction in fish consumption over the last decade. As the graph shows, the annual consumption of fish is below 160,000 kg in Catalonia, a fall of more than 10% in the last decade. In Spain, consumption was 887,448 million kg in 2022, a decrease of 15% if compared with the results of 2021, according to the latest available from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Despite this, Spain continues to appear among the countries where the most fish is consumed around the world, sharing the top 10 podium (varies depending on the different rankings consulted) with countries such as Japan, Norway, Iceland, Portugal, the Maldives or South Korea. With the data on the table, reflecting the fall in consumption and the closure of fish farms, it seems that it will not remain so for long
