Spain is absolutely Europe's most important tuna market in all aspects. This country has a population of more than 45 million people, which are Europe's biggest tuna eaters with an average annual  tuna consumption of with 2,3 kg per capita, which is equal to 12 cans of 185g net weight yearly per person !

Spain is also home to the second largest canned tuna industry in the world. Its domestic production is estimated at around 200.000 M/T of finished product, and has been growing continiously over the last decade. This mostly thanks to the vertical integration of their tuna fleet, technologically most  advanced canning plants, dynamic product innovation and excellent marketing and promotional campaigns.  Spanish canning companies have also developed fishing fleets in Central and South America, and Indian Ocean because of local short tuna supply. The increasing Spanish production helped to keep the European production trend stable, since all other tuna producing nations in the EU saw their output decline.

Frozen tuna was the most imported item – which is 60% of the entire volume of tuna taking in by Spain. 113.713 M/T. was duty cleared and 62.758 M/T of this was frozen whole round yellowfin.

Tuna loins were imported at the level of 38.553 M/T, where pre-cooked fillets were the main item with 35.371 M/T during last year, and only a small quantity were frozen raw loins.

Although the domestic production of Spain has covered more than 90% of the domestic Spanish tuna consumption, the country also imported canned tuna from other countries. In 2006 37.329 M/T or 4.203.716 cartons of canned tuna was unloaded at Spanish ports, a majority of this volume was tuna in brine. Spain got the main part of this supply from Ecuador in 2006, just as in the previous year.  The Spanish consumer consumes mostly tuna in oil in the 80g can.

There have been major players on the Spanish market like Calvo, Isabel and Jealsa. Despite many brands on the Spanish market there has been hardly any major shift in market shares between the brands. However in 2006 the market share of private labels  rose up sharply to 53%.

Spain has been the biggest EU caned tuna producer and the leading  exporter to the other EU markets, with its main destination being the Italian market. On the U.S market, with a quantity of 434 M/T in tuna exports , Spain did not play a significant role as an exporting nation in 2006.

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