Cadiz

Cadiz is on the Atlantic, not the Mediterranean — this is the Costa de la Luz, and the difference is in the light, the wind and the water temperature. Older accounts placing the city on "warm Mediterranean waters" have it in the wrong sea.

It is also one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in western Europe, founded by Phoenician traders as Gadir, and it stands on a long spit almost entirely surrounded by water.

Trafalgar, which older accounts leave out entirely

The most famous place in the province to a British reader is Cape Trafalgar, and the old descriptions of Cadiz do not mention it. The battle was fought on 21 October 1805 off that headland, between the combined French and Spanish fleets, which had sailed from Cadiz, and Nelson's fleet, which was waiting for them. Nelson was killed in it.

The cape itself is a low sandy point with a lighthouse, in the Barbate municipality about an hour south-east of the city, reached through a pine wood and across a sand isthmus. There is no monument and nothing is made of it — which is itself worth knowing before setting out, because visitors expecting a battlefield site find a beach. It is a very good beach.

The old city

Almost everything is within walking distance, which is the point of the place.

  • The cathedral, with its yellow-tiled dome, was begun in 1722 and not finished until the 1830s, so it shifts from Baroque to Neoclassical as it rises. The bell tower can be climbed by ramp for the view over the roofs and the sea on both sides.
  • The Torre Tavira was the official watchtower of the port and now holds a camera obscura, installed in the 1990s, which projects a live image of the city onto a table in a darkened room. It is the best twenty minutes in Cadiz and did not exist when older accounts were written.
  • The Museo de Cádiz is the correct name. Older accounts refer to a "Fine Arts and Archaeology Museum"; the two collections were merged in 1970 into a single museum in the Plaza de Mina. Its Phoenician sarcophagi are the reason to go, with Zurbarán upstairs.
  • The Roman theatre, found in 1980 under the Barrio del Pópulo, is one of the oldest and largest in Spain and is free.
  • The Alameda Apodaca — often misspelt "Apocada" — is the sea-facing garden promenade on the north-west shore, with the Parque Genovés beside it.

The city's other claim is constitutional. Spain's first liberal constitution was proclaimed in Cadiz on 19 March 1812, while the city was under French siege and supplied by sea — the one part of mainland Spain the French never took.

Carnival

Cadiz holds one of the two or three biggest carnivals in Spain, in February, and it is a different thing from the Rio model: the heart of it is satirical singing by costumed groups, competitive and ferociously local, with the street party built around it. It fills every bed in the province.

Beaches

La Caleta is the small one in the old town, between two castles, and the one to photograph. La Victoria, on the newer part of the spit, is the long city beach and genuinely good. Being Atlantic, the water is cooler than the Mediterranean and the surf is real; the same wind that makes it bracing has made Tarifa, at the southern tip of the province, one of the main windsurfing and kitesurfing places in Europe.

The province

Cadiz is a better base than its size suggests, because the things worth seeing are spread around it.

  • The sherry towns. Jerez de la Frontera, El Puerto de Santa María and Sanlúcar de Barrameda make up the sherry country, and the bodegas of all three take visitors. Jerez also holds the Royal Andalucian School of Equestrian Art, whose performances run only on certain days.
  • The Sierra de Grazalema, inland, is a natural park of about 51,700 hectares — older accounts give "50,000 acres", which is roughly a quarter of the real area. It is the wettest place in Spain, which is why it is green, and it holds the best of the surviving Spanish fir woods and the Garganta Verde gorge. Several of its walks require a free permit obtained in advance.
  • The white towns. Arcos de la Frontera, Vejer de la Frontera and Grazalema itself are the pick, and all three need a car.
  • Baelo Claudia, near Bolonia, is a Roman town excavated on the shore with a view across to Africa.

Position

Cadiz is about an hour and a half from Seville by train, which is the usual way to reach it, and Jerez has an airport with direct flights from the United Kingdom. Gibraltar is at the far end of the province, though not in Spain. General practicalities for the region are on the Andalucia page.

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