Panoramic view of the Port

The commercial port

At the Port of Santander, just like at almost all large ports, the majority of the facilities and workers are there to meet the needs of the ships, passengers and goods that arrive at the port. Ports that are designed to transport passengers and goods by sea are called commercial ports.

We do not get or produce many of the resources and items that we consume close to our homes. These items, which we call goods, have to be transported in order to reach the companies or shops where we buy them from. Ports are currently an essential part of this process of bringing goods from the producers to the consumers. In fact, 70% of world trade in terms of volume is transported using these infrastructures. At the beginning of the 80s' in Spain, 86% of the total tonnage of imported goods and 86% of exported goods passed through our ports.

Throughout history, maritime transport has also been used as a means of transporting people from one place to another; these people are called passengers. The settling of colonies, the mass transportation of labour -slaves, emigrants- between countries and continents, or the transporting of soldiers in times of war, are all good examples of this activity. From the 50s' onwards, competition from air transport significantly reduced the number of passengers who used the sea for long distance journeys, but not for short trips such as passing through straits or moving between islands. On the other hand, the development of holiday cruises is significantly increasing the number of passengers arriving in our ports. The transportation of passengers plays an important role in the life of Spanish ports. During 1997, around 15 million passengers came through Spanish ports, of which 10% were tourists on cruises.

In order to better understand the commercial activities at the Port of Santander, the contents of this chapter have been divided into two large blocks: "The Maritime Terminal" and "The Maliaño and Raos Quays", which deal with the needs of passengers and goods respectively.

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