Alalunga Cannery Guide: Inside a Small Cantabrian Workshop

September 26, 2026

Artesanos Alalunga, a small cannery in Reocín, Cantabria, works out a separate method for each fish it cans. It buys hake caught on hooks and cans the gelatinous cheeks as a product of their own. It divides each albacore into three cuts by fat content. It cans cuttlefish in its own ink from a family recipe, and it numbers its tins.

The result is a range built species by species and cut by cut, and a case study in how much a tin can say about the fish inside it.

From export idea to cannery

Alalunga is the work of Álvaro and Pablo Huidobro, two brothers from Santander. On the company's history page, they describe holding steady jobs outside Cantabria before coming home to make fish conservas.

Their first company was not a cannery. Spain's commercial register records Santander Food Trading beginning operations on 5 August 2015, with €6,000 in capital, Pablo Huidobro González as sole administrator and a corporate purpose covering the wholesale trade and distribution of fresh and packaged foods, including preserved seafood. Regional business reporting described the plan as a sales channel abroad for small Cantabrian food companies that wanted to export.

The export project needed a long time before the investment would return anything, and the brothers gave it up. They turned instead to a product they could make themselves.

They chose fish, and they put Bonito del Norte at the front. In 2017 they told the regional press that albacore was well known enough, and representative enough of the Cantabrian Sea, to serve as their flag. The company shares its name with the species: albacore is Thunnus alalunga.

That year the Huidobros were fitting out a unit of about 200 square meters in the Parque Empresarial Besaya in Reocín. Regional reporting at the time put the investment at about €150,000, with support from Sodercan, Cantabria's regional development agency. That June, the company said it expected to begin activity during the month.

The brothers call the cannery a taller, a workshop, because a workshop makes individual pieces by hand, the way they describe making their tins. Their working principle is short: every fish has its own character, and every fish has its own method.

Cooking gently before the final heat

Canning has a built-in problem for anyone who cares about texture. A shelf-stable tin needs a serious heat treatment, and fish keeps cooking. If it goes into the can already fully cooked, the final sterilization can leave it dry and fibrous.

Alalunga's answer is vacuum cooking. In 2017 the brothers described it to the regional press as a technique that uses low temperatures over longer periods to preserve the fish better, and the company still says it cooks at low temperature to keep the fish's sensory qualities intact. The mackerel, for example, is cooked at low temperature in its own juices before it meets oil or escabeche.

Hygiene gets the same attention. The 2017 plan included ozonated water for cleaning the fish. The workshop now describes an ozonation system that purifies the air in the work area and the running water, along with a water softener. Every product is then sterilized by heat treatment.

The sauced tins start where a home cook would start. For the bonito with tomato, Alalunga makes a tomato sauce, turns off the heat, lays in the bonito loins and lets the warmth left in the pot finish them. For the encebollado, onion is cooked slowly first and the loins go in once it is ready.

Bonito del Norte in three cuts

Alalunga says the costera, the albacore season in the Cantabrian Sea, opens with the feast of the Virgen del Carmen, patron of sailors, and closes with the feast of the Virgen del Pilar. Northern fishermen take albacore with two hook methods, trolling and live bait. Alalunga names Burela, Avilés, Santoña, Colindres, Ondarroa and Hondarribia among the ports that land it, and says its bonito is processed fresh on the day it is auctioned.

In the workshop, each bonito is divided into three cuts according to the fat in the meat. Ventresca is the belly, the fattiest and most prized part, with a buttery texture. Tarantelo sits between the belly and the loin, firm and juicy. Both are packed in olive oil that includes extra virgin Arbequina. The loins go into the cooked dishes, with tomato or with slow-cooked onion, and a spicy-oil tin uses tarantelo.

A label that names the cut says which part of the fish is in the tin. For the wider vocabulary of Spanish tuna species and cuts, see the tinned tuna and ventresca guide.

Hake and its cheeks

Albacore and mackerel are oily fish. European hake, Merluccius merluccius, is a white fish, not an oily one.

Alalunga's hake is caught by hook, locally called pincho, by Spanish boats in the Cantabrian Sea and on the Gran Sol grounds south of the British Isles. It comes through the fish markets at Celeiro in Lugo and Pasajes in Gipuzkoa. The range covers hake loins in olive oil, hake in salsa verde, and cocochas in olive oil or in salsa verde.

Cocochas are hake cheeks, and Alalunga calls them the most gelatinous and prized part of the fish. In the salsa verde version, made with garlic, parsley, onion and hake stock, that natural gelatin is what binds the sauce. In olive oil, the texture is the whole point.

Cachón and mackerel

Around the Bay of Santander, cuttlefish is called cachón. Elsewhere it goes by jibia or choco. In spring it moves toward the coast in search of warmer water to breed, and it is caught with pots or trammel nets. Alalunga uses only inshore cachón.

The recipe comes from home. The brothers remember cachón in its ink with white rice as the main dish on special days when they were children, and the company describes its tin as their grandmothers' recipe. It holds cuttlefish and its ink with tomato, white wine, onion, green pepper, Arbequina oil, carrot and garlic. It looks like a stew because it is one.

Mackerel, called verdel on this coast, runs along the Cantabrian shore as winter ends. Alalunga's is caught on hooks, one fish at a time, by small boats that haul in at dawn. It comes two ways: in olive oil, or in a traditional escabeche of Arbequina oil, wine vinegar, white wine, onion, carrot, garlic, bay, black pepper and thyme.

Farmed sea bass and Galician mussels

Not everything in the range is wild. Alalunga developed its Culture range around large Atlantic sea bass from Aquanaria, which raises the fish off the coast of Gran Canaria. Aquanaria's sea bass live for more than four years in the currents and swell of the Atlantic. The Culture tins are sea bass in olive oil, sea bass belly in olive oil, sea bass in pesto and sea bass a la bilbaína.

The mussels come from rafts, or bateas, in the Galician rías, where they grow slowly in the tides. Alalunga buys them from selected suppliers, cleans them by hand and makes them one by one, frying them and packing them either in a delicate emulsion or in a classic house escabeche. Both come in large and giant sizes.

Hook-caught fish, an inshore cephalopod, farmed sea bass and raft-grown shellfish are four different sourcing stories, and the company names each one.

Alalunga's range at a glance

The table gathers what Alalunga publishes about each species across its separate pages.

Species	How caught or raised	Where	Preparations
Bonito del Norte (Thunnus alalunga)	Hook: trolling and live bait, during the costera	Cantabrian Sea; ports include Burela, Avilés, Santoña, Colindres, Ondarroa, Hondarribia	Ventresca and tarantelo in olive oil; with tomato; encebollado; spicy oil
European hake (Merluccius merluccius)	Hook (pincho), Spanish boats	Cantabrian Sea and Gran Sol; landed at Celeiro and Pasajes	Loins in olive oil; salsa verde; cocochas in olive oil; cocochas in salsa verde
Mackerel (Scomber scombrus)	Hook, one by one, small dawn boats	Cantabrian coast, end of winter	Olive oil; escabeche
Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), cachón	Pots or trammel nets, inshore	Cantabrian coast, spring	In its ink
Sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax)	Farmed by Aquanaria off the Gran Canaria coast, more than four years	Gran Canaria	Olive oil; belly in olive oil; pesto; a la bilbaína
Mussels	Raft-grown (bateas), hand-cleaned	Galician rías	Fried, in emulsion or escabeche; large and giant

Two dated records anchor the founding:

5 August 2015: Santander Food Trading begins operations, according to the commercial register.
June 2017: the roughly 200-square-meter Reocín unit is being fitted out, with about €150,000 invested and activity expected to begin that month.

The numbered tin

Alalunga limits each run. The company calls the information that comes with each tin the fish's currículum vitae. Every tin is numbered and carries extra details about where the fish came from and its history.

That makes each tin read like a fish-market tag. For how to read dates, species and fishing claims on any tin, see the tinned fish label reading guide.

Where to start

The tin that shows the most about the method is the hake cheek. Alalunga Hake Cheeks in Olive Oil (shop Alalunga Hake Cheeks in Olive Oil) holds cocochas packed in olive oil that includes extra virgin Arbequina, with spring salt and nothing else alongside the fish.

Warm it gently, if at all, and keep the oil for bread or boiled potatoes. Alalunga's own pages say not to heat the tin in the microwave.

Two brothers who set out to sell other people's food abroad now make a tin that carries the fish's currículum vitae.