Three excuses to visit Spanish town

Jerez de la Frontera, with only 200,000 inhabitants, is home to three Spanish icons – flamenco, sherry and the Carthusian breed of Andalusian horses.

There’s a darkness to Jerez de la Frontera that might not be immediately obvious. As you stroll the pleasant, tree-lined streets here, or wander narrow old-town alleys, as you call past busy markets and table-strewn plazas it can seem as if this southern Spanish city just basks in the rays of its good fortune, its warm weather, its prosperity.

I’m sitting on a creaky wooden chair in Tabanco el Pasaje, a sweaty, tiny club and restaurant in central Jerez.

On the equally creaky wooden stage just in front of me there are two men seated, dressed all in black, one plucking an acoustic guitar. And there’s a woman in a flamboyantly ruffled black-andwhite polka-dotted dress, standing tall, arms high above her head, chin raised in defiance, eyes ablaze with passion.

This is flamenco. It’s an art form and a cultural icon, born on these Jerez streets and lived in these clubs, a style of dance and a form of music that has come to be associated globally with Spain as a whole, and yet which originated from the Romani population here in Andalusia.

And it’s dark, in some ways. It’s painful. Even if you can’t understand the words being sung, you can feel the tempo and see the rictus fixed on the dancer’s face and realise that flamenco is music of sadness. It’s music of lost love, separation and the struggle to survive.

It helps to give some context to Jerez de la Frontera. This is quite an incredible city, a place of only 200,000 inhabitants, and yet home to three Spanish icons, known around the world: flamenco, sherry wine, and the Carthusian breed of Andalusian horses. Think of Spain and there’s a very good chance that what you’re picturing will either originate from Jerez, or be regularly practised here.

The sherry is pure joy. Jerez is part of the “sherry triangle”, the only three towns in the world – Jerez, Sanlucar de Barrameda to its west, and the Puerto de Santa Maria to the south – in which genuine sherry wine can be produced.

The city streets of Jerez are lined with bodegas, cellar spaces in which this wine is stored and aged, where the conditions both inside and out are said to be perfect for a style of beverage that went out of fashion there for a while, though now is enjoying a resurgence. Sherry never faded from public consciousness in Jerez, of course, where everywhere from tabancos – cheap local bars – to high-end restaurants pours the local drop to an adoring populace.

I’ve made one stop at Bodegas Tradicion, a producer of high-end sherry in central Jerez, where the tour takes in both the cellar and the adjoining art gallery, as well as a sample of the company’s products in a vine-covered courtyard at the end.

I also visited Bodegas Luis Perez, a winery atop a hill in the dusty countryside on the outskirts of Jerez, a maker of more recognisable table wines rather than sherry. Here you come to realise the versatility and the pure deliciousness of palomino fino, the white grape that’s native to this region, and which goes into the making of so many of its best products.

But let’s get back to the flamenco. There are three ways to experience this art form in Jerez: at a theatre, where there are regular formal performances; at a “pena”, a local flamenco club, where the scene is at its rawest; and a tabanco, where shows are cheap, usually paired with simple food, and the performers demonstrate a range of different “palos”, or forms of flamenco.

I visit three tabancos over three nights – Tabanco el Pasaje, La Guarida del Angel, and Tabanco a la Feria – and each offers something slightly different, different performers, different palos, different levels of intensity and skill.

At all, however, you can see the passion wrought on faces, you can see the glistening of sweat and the reverence for the form, and you can understand just a little more of the full character of Jerez.

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See: andalucia.org

The writer travelled with assistance from Turespana and the Tourist Office of Jerez de la Frontera.

Jerez is a small but incredible city, with tree-lined streets and old-town alleys.

Sherry is available everywhere, from cheap local bars to high-end restaurants.