AP PHOTOS: As Spain's 'peasant farmers of the sea,' groups of women dig for clams

They fan out in groups, mostly women, plodding in rain boots across the soggy wet sands of the inlet, making the most of the low tide.

Hustling along with rakes and buckets, they chat and laugh gaily. These are clam diggers, or as they call themselves, “the peasant farmers of the sea.”

Ruddy-faced from the coastal winds and hard work, they wear colorful headscarves and ordinary house clothes, cutting a perfect oil-painting landscape against the striking blue sky and wispy white clouds in the chilly hours at the break of dawn.

Clam collecting in the expansive inlets of Spain’s northwestern region of Galicia is a deep-rooted tradition, handed down from generation to generation.

“My mother made me become a shellfish collector,” says Mari Carmen Vázquez, 57, head of the Lourizan inlet collective of clam collectors. “There was no other future.”

In times past, the women of Lourizan village would trawl the wet sands while their husbands went to sea, often for several months at a...