Cod is fished in very cold waters. In Norway and Iceland's seas, for example. Here in Spain, specially in the Basque country and Catalunya have a long tradition, since the XVIII century, to eat this fish. You will wonder how, back then, people living in the country could manage to consume fish...Imagine how was life so long ago, no fridges, no good comunications, no fast vehicles... if you lived inland, far away from the coast, you had no chance to eat fish, your diet was based in land animals' proteins. People found out that salt was a very good way to conserve and preserve food. They applied this principle to codfish: drying the fish and covering it with salt, it lasted for a long time.
Eventhough, today we don't need anymore this procedure, gastronomy has its own rules and it has became a tradition in the Basque and Catalan culinary cultures to keep those dishes made out of "desalted" (I don't know how to say it) codfish.
There's special shops where you can buy this fish prepared in this particular way.You can either buy it salty and rinse the salt away at home during 2-3 days, puting it in a recipient covered with water, changing the water twice a day and having it in the fridge, or buy it "desalted" that means ready to be consumed.
I hope this explanation helps you to understand a bit the difference between a "desalted codfish" (if you know a better way to name it, please let me know) and fresh codfish.
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