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Spain is an eminently maritime country with a long continental shelf running along the entire periphery of the Spanish coast. This narrow continental shelf is extremely rich in fish resources since the shelf is close to land.
The exploitation of these marine resources has a long tradition in Spain. Even in the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, the salted cod and anchovy, sardine, and pickled tunafish trade, etc. established links between the Galician, Cantabrian, South Atlantic or Levante ports, and the inner cities.
The territorial sea is a belt of coastal waters extending 200 nautical miles at most from the baseline of a coastal state, mark out the area of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). This is the national fishing ground. Most of the Spanish fishing vessels fish in four different fishing areas of the national fishing ground: the Cantabrian-Northwest, the Gulf of Cádiz, the Canary Islands and the Mediterranean Sea. It has to do with an inshore fleet, whose vessels are in censuses, allowing them to fish in certain areas of the fishing grounds with specific techniques or rigs, although there is a significant number of fishing units of artisanal nature.
The increased demand for fishery products laid bare the lack of the fishing production in the national fishing grounds, leading to the development of fisheries in international waters and far-away fishing grounds.
The Treaty of the European Union establishes that fishing is one of the Common Policies and that, therefore, the Union has exclusive jurisdiction in this matter. There is rivalry among the autonomous communities over the fishing that takes place in inland waters, as well as over shellfishing and aquaculture, and with regard to management of the fishing sector and fishery product marketing, development, and execution of the unitary framework. This framework is determined by Law 3/2001, of March 26, Law of Maritime Fishing of the State.[1]