Museum of Santoña's Canning History
A contemporary, living, immersive and open museum, faithful to Santoña's canning tradition.
Santoña Town Council wanted to showcase the maritime, industrial and historical heritage of the town by creating the Museum of Santoña's Canning History, housed in the emblematic Fuerte San Martín.
The fishing, salting and canning industry, driven from the late 19th century by Spanish and Italian pioneers, transformed the town and made the anchovy one of the great symbols of its economic, social and cultural development.
During the opening of the space, the mayor of Santoña, Jesús Gullart, stressed that “Santoña is the sea; it owes everything to the sea, both for its tradition of great navigators and sailors and for the whole fishing and canning industry”.
Showcasing a tradition and giving visibility to a profession in an interactive, immersive space
To transform this historic building into a contemporary museum that is alive, open and connected with its community, the Town Council chose to combine historical pieces and tradition with immersive technology and the most advanced interactive content.
Santoña needed a modern museum, with an exhibition narrative that connects canning heritage and collective memory with younger generations and with new cultural languages through participatory formats.
To achieve this, it was necessary to build a space that paid homage to tradition and gave visibility to the community's women canning workers, recognising their role, historically silenced in traditional industrial narratives yet key to the development of the sector.
The project's objectives therefore included:
- Attracting and building loyalty among all kinds of audiences: Creating an immersive, interactive and educational experience through gamification and virtual reality.
- Preserving and passing on collective memory: Documenting and sharing, in an engaging way, the traditional process of making canned fish, the evolution of the brands and the urban history of Santoña.
- Establishing Santoña as a cultural and tourist destination: Strengthening the town's tourism offer by positioning Fuerte San Martín as an innovative, culture-based attraction that brings together tradition and technology.
Gamified technology experiences that underpin the museum's proposal
As a technology partner specialising in immersive and interactive solutions, INVELON has led the design, development and implementation of all the museum's experiences:
- Five Virtual Reality experiences: immersive 360-degree environments that take visitors beyond the museum walls: the recreation of Santoña's Roman port, the old Italian salting factory, the simulation that turns you into a fisherman for a day aboard a fishing boat, the immersive experience of an auction at the fish market and the 360° panoramic flight over Santoña Bay.
- Interactive map “From yesterday to today: a panoramic view”: INVELON has developed and integrated touchscreen software that lets visitors fly over Santoña's urban and territorial evolution through 3D models, images, videos, texts and soundscapes.
- Gamified experience “From sea to table”: Creation of an interactive video game that invites users to become a master canner for a day, recreating the traditional process of making anchovy fillets (from selecting the raw material to heading, salting and final packing).
- Interactive avatars of the canning workers: Development of four digital recreations of women canning workers from different eras (Carmen, María, Loli and Puerto). Through interactive conversations, these avatars share their testimonies and anecdotes and explain the challenges of the trade and generational renewal.
- Interactive projection and graphic archive: Implementation of an interactive system dedicated to the historical catalogue of labels, lithographs and tins from local companies, showing the evolution of graphic design and brands.
Transforming the learning of history into a sensory, participatory experience that is accessible to all audiences
Combining the historical weight of Fuerte San Martín with the power of INVELON's technological development has made the Museum of Canning History be perceived as a living, innovative space.
A perfect balance has been achieved between preserving tangible and intangible heritage and projecting Santoña into the future through digitalisation and immersive experiences.
Visitors can experience virtual reality technology and state-of-the-art interactive screens intuitively, free of charge and without complications, thus democratising access to immersive technology.
In addition, thanks to the gamification of learning through a video game and the touchscreens, children and young people get to grips with the complexity of traditional canning work through interaction and virtual practice.
Finally, interacting with the virtual avatars humanises industrial history, allowing visitors to hear directly the voices and testimonies of the women who built the town's identity, with empathy and emotional and cultural transmission.