Their roe were consumed for using traditional salting methods, as it has always been done in Andalucia.
“This is proof that Cervantes mentioned caviar in El Quijote (1615):”
“They stretched themselves on the ground, and making a tablecloth of the grass they spread upon it bread, salt, knives, walnut, scraps of cheese, and well-picked ham-bones which if they were past gnawing were not past sucking. They also put down a black dainty called, they say, caviar, and made of the eggs of fish, a great thirst-wakener.”
(chapter LIV)