The smell and taste of the sea

The seafaring district of Tarragona, known as El Serrallo, which sits next to one of the most important seaports in the Mediterranean, has long had a great tradition of gastronomy, culture, associations and economic activity focused mainly on fishing and the sea since time immemorial.

We know that the fishing tradition has been documented in Tarragona since the 13th century. In the 14th century, the first seaman’s shops (wooden huts where fishermen lived, which they also used as warehouses) were documented on Miracle Beach and, later, near the mouth of the Francolí river.

During the 18th century, most people working in the fishing world lived in the upper part of the Tarragona city. The poorest, however, were housed in huts in what was then called Llatzeret Beach, near Carrer del Mar.

At the end of the 18th century, the Port Works Board planned the construction of the Marina district in the lower part of the city. It was not until the middle of the 19th century, however, that El Serrallo became the fishing district of Tarragona.

The construction of the Tarragona-Reus-Montblanc-Lleida railway line and expansion of the port of Tarragona meant that the fishermen’s houses on Carrer del Mar had to be moved to the current location between the port and the train track and the Francolí area. And when the neighbourhood began to grow during the second half of the 19th century, it took on the name of El Serrallo, which comes from the Italian word serraglio, meaning menagerie in English.