Claudia Pilar Fernández González

Claudia was born in October 1934 on Cuba de Abajo Street in Suances. From the age of seven, she was responsible for all the household chores and helped her parents, wholesale fishmongers, with deliveries and collecting payments from the vendors. She studied at the Trinitarian nuns' school until she was thirteen, after which she trained as a seamstress. At twenty-three, she married XXX, who worked at the bar La Turista, and in 1959 they moved to Torrelavega to run another bar called La Bodega. The following year they returned to Suances and decided to start their own business, opening a restaurant called El Caserío in the lighthouse in June 1961. Claudia managed the business and was also in charge of the kitchen, specializing in fish and seafood, while balancing her family life as a mother of two daughters and two sons. At 63, after 36 years at the restaurant, she took early retirement, and one of her sons took over the management of the hotel and café at El Caserío. Claudia tells us about her marriage, the learning process and difficulties she faced in her profession, her births and motherhood, as well as her leisure time. Legado Cantabria is a production of Fundación PEM