Salted_ A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes - Mark Bitterman [35]
Just a few hundred years ago, San Fernando was still a small town perched on a rocky outcropping overlooking the Bay of Cádiz. In the 1700s, the number of active saltworks in the estuary was greatly expanded. In the ensuing centuries, engineers cut through the meanders of the San Pedro River, drained marshes in the pursuit of agriculture (a failed effort), and constructed fortifications, wharfs, industrial areas, and urban developments. The great bay was being filled in. But, for the most part, the conditions necessary for the production of salt from the sea were preserved, and the inhabitants of the area were raised with a respect—a veneration even—for their ancestral ways. But these changes, no matter how dramatic, pale in comparison to the impact of the industrialization of salt production in the late twentieth century. Salt was devalued, and the economic interests of the salt workers—who had previously insured the preservation of the wetlands as a precious natural resource—largely vanished.
San Fernando is now entirely surrounded by land, silted in by constantly shifting tidal estuaries. Saltworks that produced salt for more than a millennium were filled with rubble and waste, and then paved over to make room for apartment buildings. An aerial view of the region tells the story. The vast tidal estuary near Cádiz is mottled with salt fields. Encroaching on all sides is housing and industrial development. Where development has not yet succeeded in making use of the land, many salt fields are nonetheless abandoned, victims of the collapse of the salt market over the last hundred years.
A tremendous number of birds still live here—more than 150 species by most accounts. The pigeon and shelduck spend their winters there, as do the Limicolae (shore birds). Migratory birds use the area as a staging ground en route between Africa and Europe. Black-winged stilt, plover, redshank, pratincole, avocet, and little tern nest there. Flamingos, the ever present salt-marsh connoisseurs, live there year round. In addition, the area serves as a reserve for birds displaced during periods of drought elsewhere. All of this wildlife is now threatened by development infill, as are the salt pans of San Fernando, Chiclana de la Frontera, and Puerto Real. Modernity has not been kind to the area.
But all is not lost. The saltmakers of San Fernando are keenly aware of the importance and uniqueness of their trade, which is brought into sharp relief by the tension between the ancient methods by which they work the salt marshes and the pressures of modernity that threaten them on every side. Of the two hundred-odd salt makers in the Cádiz region, six still follow the salt-making practices established by the Romans in 500 CE. Visit one of those six salt makers and you will see ponds whose borders have not been altered in over a millennium, except with minor modifications to allow for trucks to haul salt where just decades ago donkeys and boats were used.
Salt making is one of the few economic interests remaining in the region with a voice against encroachment. Moreover, the very practices that harness a salt marsh to produce salt preserve and invigorate the marsh’s natural ecology. A traditional salt farm uses no mechanization, and introduces no pollutants. The plants and animals that live there contribute to the stability of the shifting waterways and tides. The natural ecological diversity of salt ponds also aids in the efficient evaporation of seawater and therefore the productivity of the saltworks. Preserving the fragile ecology preserves the saltworks, and vice versa. Incredibly, you can still taste, buy, cook with, and eat salt that has been made in the manner of the ancient Romans. And, most beautifully of all, you can still walk up to a man at work by the side of a salt barn, strike up a conversation, and listen raptly as he