Day seven delivered Jerez in full, completing the Andalusian promise with an almost overconfident efficiency. It started in Cádiz with a quiet morning climb up the cathedral tower before the city had fully woken, the Atlantic stretching out in every direction, then a short drive inland to Jerez where the day unfolded as a tightly packed trilogy of horses, sherry, and flamenco: the Andalusian stallions performing their controlled 18th-century ballet at the Real Escuela, the cool cathedral-sized silence of a bodega where the solera system quietly defies the idea of vintage altogether, and finally a small room where bulería was sung and danced with a kind of intensity that made everything else feel decorative by comparison By late afternoon the scenery shifted again as we left the flat agricultural plain and climbed toward the Sierra de Grazalema, the landscape tightening into limestone and wind and pinsapo forests, ending at dusk in Zahara de la Sierra, where the white village appeared suddenly on its rocky perch above the turquoise reservoir, all light and silhouette and history condensed into a single view. The day closed in the quiet realization that Andalucía had stopped building toward anything; it was simply just showing off.
The Cathedral Tower at Dawn
Brief word on Semana Santa, since it was lurking everywhere we went, seven days away: Holy Week is Spain's most emotionally intense religious festival, a tradition dating back to the 16th century. Each evening, cofradías (brotherhoods) carry enormous pasos (ornate floats bearing religious sculptures, some centuries old) through the city streets, accompanied by brass bands playing the marchas procesionales, the haunting music specific to this season. The nazarenos (penitents) walk in their distinctive pointed hoods (a sight that alarmed a few visiting Americans before they understood the context) and the whole city comes to a standstill. In Seville and Málaga especially, the processions can last 12 hours. Street crossings require permission from the brotherhood. People weep. People cheer. It is, by all accounts, extraordinary. We were a week early. By design.
The Cádiz Cathedral (La Catedral de Santa Cruz sobre las Aguas, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross over the Waters) sits at the eastern edge of the old city, its golden dome catching the first light before almost anything else. It took 116 years to build: foundations laid in 1722, construction proceeding through six architects and three stylistic eras (Baroque, Rococó, Neoclassical). Finally consecrated in 1838, and even then, technically incomplete, because the ambition of the original plans, which included towers taller than the Giralda of Seville, had been quietly abandoned somewhere in the middle of the 18th century when the money ran out. The result is a cathedral of genuine grandeur that is, like its Málaga counterpart, also slightly one-armed, though here the abbreviation is subtler, a certain foreshortening of the upper volumes, a sense that what you're seeing was meant to be taller and more imposing than it ultimately became.
The patrons were not modest. This was the Cathedral of the Americas. Its construction was funded entirely by the wealth flowing through the Cádiz port monopoly on trade with Spain's New World colonies. The 18th century was Cádiz's golden age, and the cathedral is its monument to that prosperity. They wanted Seville's Giralda. They got something smaller but not inelegant, with a dome clad in glazed yellow tiles that glows like hammered gold. The image that defines the Cádiz skyline from any approach by sea.
Inside: the vast central nave, the high altar, sixteen chapels arranged around the perimeter, and a crypt below sea level, close enough to the Atlantic that the stone is said to carry an acoustic hum on certain days.
The bell tower is the non-negotiable part of the visit. Entry is included in the ticket price, and the climb is unusual: not stairs but a continuous spiral stone ramp that winds upward with no indication of which direction you're facing at any given moment, past small landings where windows open onto increasingly vertiginous views of the cathedral roof and the city below. At the top, after what feels like considerably more than the tower's actual 56 meters, a viewing platform opens onto a panorama that is one of the more startling views in Andalucía: the old city spreading below in every direction, surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic and the Bay of Cádiz. The whole peninsula visible in miniature, the sea impossibly bright in the morning light.
Standing up there, taking it all in, breathing the morning salt air, it somehow teleported me to the Black Sea coast, in the Old Constanta town where I was born. Equally old (named Tomis initially, founded around 600 BC by Greek colonists) and equally shaped, culturally and architecturally over time by Greeks, Romans, and Ottomans. Perhaps, subconsciously, that was my draw to Cádiz.
The bells are directly overhead and operate every quarter hour. I was warned to be off the platform before the hour strikes, but didn’t make it. Ears were still ringing way after we came down.
At ten in the morning, with the cathedral still quiet and the tower barely populated, this was an exceptional hour.
Torre Tavira would have been another worthy stop, but the clock was ticking and we had at least 30 mins to get to Jerez de la Frontera and a horse show starting promptly at noon.
Jerez de la Frontera: The Trifecta
The drive from Cádiz to Jerez is thirty-five minutes. You park a few blocks away, walk to the Real Escuela, and spend the better part of the day in a state of concentrated pleasure. This is what I mean by "the trifecta": three different Jerez experiences: horses, sherry, flamenco, each of which would justify the detour independently, and which together constitute one of the best single days possible in Andalucía. We experienced this through the superb Alma Jerez package (www.almajerez.com), which bundled the horse show, sherry bodega tour, and a Flamenco performance for less than I would have paid for the three separately.
A brief orientation: Jerez de la Frontera is the capital of sherry wine production, the spiritual home of Spanish classical horsemanship, and, along with Triana in Seville and the caves of Granada, one of the three points of the golden triangle from which flamenco emerged. The word "sherry" is itself an English corruption of "Jerez" (or rather of the town's medieval name "Sherish," which is what the English heard when the wine started arriving in their ports in the 16th century). Francis Drake sacked the port of Cádiz in 1596 and made off with approximately three thousand barrels of sherry, which introduced the wine to British drinking culture in a manner that the town's wine merchants might have preferred to avoid, but which proved commercially fortuitous. The British aristocracy developed a consuming passion for the stuff and by the 17th and 18th centuries, British and Irish merchant families were establishing the great bodegas that still operate today.
Act One: How the Andalusian Horses Dance
The Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Ecuestre (Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art) occupies a former 19th-century palace and its surrounding grounds near the center of Jerez. It is one of the Big Four classical riding academies in the world (Spanish Riding School in Vienna, the Cadre Noir in Saumur, and the Portuguese School in Lisbon, the other 3). This company is not accidental. These four institutions share a common lineage stretching back to the Renaissance courts of Europe, where the horses, trained to execute precise, difficult movements on command, was both a military technology and an aesthetic ideal. The equine equivalent of ballet.
The show is called Cómo Bailan los Caballos Andaluces ("How the Andalusian Horses Dance" and it was created in 1973 by Don Álvaro Domecq, a member of one of the great Jerez sherry dynasties, who wanted to honor King Juan Carlos with a performance that showcased the school's training.
The program runs six to eight choreographies, with riders in 18th-century Andalusian dress, and horses from prized Iberian lineage. It opens with doma vaquera: a rider guiding a stallion one-handed, the cues nearly invisible, the horse responding as if on instinct. Then the Haute École: passage, piaffe, and the airs above the ground. Most strikingly the capriole, where a 550-kilogram horse launches and kicks out midair with improbable precision. The finale, the Carrousel, brings six riders into synchronized formation, weaving through geometric patterns to rising Spanish music, and earning the kind of applause reserved for something better than expected.
Booking note: The show runs on specific days (primarily Tuesdays and Thursdays, with additional performances during peak season) starting at midday. Book well in advance during spring and summer. The grounds include the stables, tack room, carriage collection, and gardens, which can be visited on non-show days. The Álvaro Domecq bodega is a five-minute drive from the Real Escuela entrance.
Act Two: The Solera System
After the horses, we drove to Bodegas Álvaro Domecq; yes, the same family, because Jerez's great dynasties have always understood that horses and sherry are not separate activities but complementary expressions of the same fundamental commitment to doing difficult things elegantly.
A bodega visit bears little resemblance to a vineyard tour in, say, Burgundy or Napa. You're not walking through rows of vines; you're entering a building the size of a cathedral, its interior filled with the sweet smell of aging wine and old oak, its walls lined with barrels stacked three and four high, everything cool and dim, purposely mouldy, and slightly otherworldly. The albariza soil around Jerez grows the Palomino Fino grape that makes dry sherry, and the Pedro Ximénez grape that makes the sweet varieties. After the harvest, fermentation produces a still white wine; the fortification with grape spirit follows, increasing the alcohol to between 15 and 22 percent depending on the intended style. Then the aging, in the solera system.
The solera is what makes sherry fundamentally different from any other wine. Rather than aging a single vintage in isolation, producers maintain a cascading series of casks arranged in rows on the floor. When wine is drawn from the bottom casks (the solera proper, the oldest) it is replenished from the row above, which is replenished from the row above, and so on through as many as fourteen criaderas (nurseries). The result is a wine of no single vintage but of many vintages simultaneously blended, each bottling containing traces of wine that may be decades old, the character of each bottling mathematically consistent year after year. A bottle of fino sherry will taste essentially the same whether you buy it in 2010 or 2026, because it was blended from a system that has been running continuously since the 19th century.
Our guide explained the classification system with the patience of someone who does it daily and has not yet lost interest: fino is the driest, palest, most saline style, aged under a film of flor yeast that protects it from oxygen; manzanilla is fino made exclusively in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, where the salty coastal climate gives it an additional tang; amontillado is a fino that has outlasted its flor and begun to oxidize, developing a nuttier, more complex character; oloroso bypasses the flor entirely and ages in direct contact with oxygen, becoming dark amber and rich; palo cortado is an accident, a fino whose flor died prematurely, producing a wine that is neither amontillado nor oloroso but something mysteriously in between; Pedro Ximénez is made from sun-dried grapes and is so concentrated it barely pours, tasting of dried figs and Christmas cake and concentrated time. All this knowledge would have come in handy days earlier in Malaga (at Antigua Casa de Guardia), where I was just “winging it” trying various wines with zero education on the topic.
We tasted through the range. The fino was cool, almost austere, tasting of almonds and sea air in a glass. The amontillado developed warmth slowly, its walnut character emerging over several sips. The oloroso was dark and substantial and deeply savory, the kind of wine that pairs with slow-cooked lamb and the kind of afternoon that has no agenda. At the end, the guide, perhaps taking pity on the eager foreigner, poured me a sip of a 30-year-old oloroso from a small cask in the corner. Darker, stronger, but much smoother than the previous ones. Less of a drink and more like a condensed experience.
Act Three: The Bulería
In the hierarchy of Spanish flamenco cities, Jerez is the place most serious practitioners point to when asked where the form is at its most pure. Seville has refinement and elegance; the sevillana as social dance, the polished performances of the Triana tablaos. Granada has the Sacromonte caves and the zambra, the Gypsy form rooted in the old Arabic dances of Al-Andalus. But Jerez has the bulería.
The bulería is flamenco's most technically demanding and rhythmically complex form: twelve-beat cycles at high speed, with intricate syncopation and an improvisatory element that allows the singer, dancer, and guitarist to challenge each other in real time. It originated in the Gypsy barrios of Santiago and San Miguel in Jerez. Neighborhoods where it was not performed for tourists in tablaos but sung at family gatherings, in bars, at weddings, at funerals. It is still done this way in its authentic form, in the peñas flamencas (members' clubs) and tabancos (traditional sherry bars) of the city. The Jerez style is the most austere and emotionally uncompromising. Less decorative than Seville, less theatrically produced than the shows for tourists in the big cities, and in that austerity, often more powerful.
We attended a performance in a room adjacent to the bodega. A mere dozen people there at that hour. Nothing extravagant. A small stage, three chairs and a lamp. The guitarist tuned without ceremony. The singer, a middle-aged man with a large voice and no apparent interest in making anyone comfortable, sat with his hands folded in his lap and began.
I had seen three flamenco performances on this trip: the caves of the Sacromonte in Granada (intimate, visceral, with the Roma history pressing close), the tablao in Seville we will discuss later (polished, theatrical, technically impressive but slightly distanced), and this one. The Jerez performance operated by different physics. The singer's voice was not beautiful in any conventionally pleasing sense; it was something raw and more structural, a vibrato sound produced by someone working from deep in the body. The cante of the siguiriya he opened with, the oldest and most serious of the flamenco forms, the one closest to duende, the spirit of authentic art, made several people in the room go very still.
The dancer who joined him was precise and economical, a woman in her late forties perhaps, whose footwork had the quality of percussion rather than dance: mathematical in its rhythmic complexity, the sounds produced by the shoes functioning as a second rhythm instrument against the guitar, the singer, and the handclapping. Between solos, all three performers generated that acceleration of energy that is the hallmark of the bulería at its best. A building, slightly dangerous-feeling momentum, like watching something spin faster and faster without breaking.
There was a moment, probably three minutes into the final number, when all three had locked into a shared rhythm that seemed to generate its own forward pressure, when the woman sitting to my left, who had been taking careful video of the whole performance, put her phone in her bag and sat with her hands in her lap. This is the reliable indicator that something real has happened.
We left quietly.
The Drive Into the Sierra: Zahara de la Sierra
This entire experience in Jerez started around 11:30. By 5 we were done. It was time to head towards Sierra de Grazalema National Park. An area of Spain littered with “white villages” where the plan was to enjoy the scenic stretch of CA-9104 between Grazalema and Zahara de la Frontera. That stretch of road would have been the highlight of this road trip, with fantastic views across the surrounding Grazalema mountains.
Unfortunately, in February, a couple of back-to-back Atlantic storms (Leandro and Marta) battered the region with severe rainfall of 30-50 cm in some areas (that’s 12-20 inches) which wreaked havoc on saturated ground. The deluge triggered widespread flooding (around Grazalema and Guadalquivir River in particular), causing massive evacuations (over 11,000 people) and severe disruptions to the infrastructure, both roads and rail. More than 140 roads were closed, and some were still not open yet. This meant a few detours, and the disappointment of leaving some of the itinerary for “next time”.
So from Jerez, we headed back east, crossing by Arcos de la Frontera (would have been a nice stop if time allowed) on the way to Zahara de la Frontera. As you drive on, the landscape performs a sudden transformation: from flat wheat fields to the road winding foothills of the Sierra de Grazalema, a limestone mountain range of fantastic scenery.
About an hour later, detours and all, right as the sun was setting over the valley, we caught the first glimpse of Zahara. The village, perched on a steep rocky promontory at 450 meters above sea level, a single white mass of houses terraced up a cliff above a turquoise reservoir, the Nasrid tower of its castle at the very top against the sky. The photograph you see in every pueblos blancos collection is usually taken from the road approach, with the mirror of the Zahara-El Gastor reservoir in the foreground and the castle catching the last afternoon light. It fully earns the attention.
Zahara's history is a compressed illustration of the late Reconquista's frontier politics. This was one of the critical strongholds on the medieval border between Christian Castile and the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. A watchtower in a network of watchtowers, each visually linked to the next, designed to pass information faster than armies could travel. Christians captured it in 1407. In 1483, Rodrigo Ponce de León, who would eventually become the first Duke of Cádiz, retook Zahara for the last time. Within nine years, Granada had fallen, the Reconquista was complete, and Columbus had sailed.
Wondering if Rodrigo had any connection to Juan Ponce de León, the explorer who led the first expedition to Florida, imprinted his name on several places in Florida, Southern Georgia, and the Caribbean (at some point served as governor of Puerto Rico). Small world, huh?
The village is small. We parked at the lower entrance for some panoramic shots. Then drove up the steep, narrow road to our hotel, right next to the entrance to the castle. It was quiet on a Tuesday evening. All but one little bodega were closed. Enjoyed a quick stroll through and parked it overnight in a quaint little hotel overlooking the valley below. G’nite!
Practical Notes: Day 7
Cádiz Cathedral: Open Monday to Saturday 10am–7pm (hours vary seasonally). Entry is €7, which includes the tower climb. Climb the Torre del Reloj, but be off the observation platform before the hour if you value your hearing. Budget 30-40 minutes for the interior plus tower.
Jerez de la Frontera: The package we got was a great value, combining the horse show, bodega tour and flamenco (www.almajerez.com). Just note that it’s only available as a package on the days the horse show runs. Otherwise, book individually.
Real Escuela (horses): Book online at www.realescuela.org well in advance, particularly for spring and summer performances. Shows run approximately 90 minutes including interval. Seats in the upper tiers offer the best view of the floor patterns in formation work; lower tiers are better for individual horse detail. Arrive 30 minutes early to see the grounds. Non-show day visits (stables, tack room, carriage museum) available Tuesday–Friday 10am–2pm.
Sherry bodegas: Álvaro Domecq (adjacent to the Real Escuela), González Byass (Tío Pepe; the most organized and best-narrated large-house tour), and Bodegas Tradición (smaller, older, more intimate; tastings include 20- and 30-year expressions) are all strong options. For the deepest sherry experience, book Bodegas Tradición in advance. It includes a tour of their private art collection (Velázquez, Goya, Zurbarán) as well as the tasting. Budget at least an hour for any bodega visit including tasting.
Flamenco in Jerez: The Festival de Jerez runs February to early March and offers the highest concentration of authentic performance. Year-round: the tabancos (especially Tabanco El Pasaje and Tabanco San Pablo) host informal, often spontaneous performances with local performers, cheaper and frequently more authentic than the formal tablaos. For structured tablao performances: Tablao Flamenco Puro Arte and La Guarida del Ángel are consistently recommended. Avoid the tourist-circuit shows with dinner packages. The food is irrelevant and the performances are designed for people who have never seen flamenco before.
Drive to Zahara de la Sierra: From Jerez, approximately 60 minutes via Arcos de la Frontera on the A-382 and CA-531. Check road conditions in the Sierra de Grazalema before departure. Storm damage can close mountain roads without extensive advance notice. The approach from the south (crossing the Zahara-El Gastor dam) is the most scenic. If roads are open, go A-372 via El Bosque, then up CA-9104, after a short detour in Grazalema.
Zahara de la Sierra: Park at the lower village entrance (free). Walk up through the medieval streets to the Plaza Mayor (15 minutes from the lower parking area). Continue to the castle from Plaza Mayor (another 15–20 minutes, steep). The Torre del Homenaje is worth the climb. Wear proper walking shoes. The village has several excellent restaurants in Plaza Mayor; Mesón Los Estribos, Oñate, bar Josefi and Marqués de Zahara all serve good local food including venison and wild boar, appropriate at this altitude.
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