Before they sold shellfish, the Oubiñas harvested it. Trace the family tree of Laureano Oubiña—founder of Mariscos Laureano, one of Galicia’s best-known shellfish companies, in the coastal village of Cambados—and every branch leads to the sea. Fishermen, shellfish gatherers: everywhere you look are “sea people,” as Laureano likes to call them.
In the late 1980s, Laureano began farming oysters and mussels, sensing that Galicia’s shellfish deserved a more professional route to market. He opened a purification facility in Cambados while keeping the traditional bateas—the floating wooden rafts anchored offshore where the region’s bivalves are cultivated.
That purification facility developed into Mariscos Laureano, which Laureano has been running alongside his son Fernando for decades. The traditional bateas remain in use today, linking the family’s fishing roots to a business that supplies some of Spain’s most celebrated restaurants.
