Blog Eight – El Puerto de Santa Maria

Published by Alastair Reid on October 4, 2018October 4, 2018

El Puerto de Santa Maria [28th September – 5th October]

Staying in El Puerto de Santa Maria for a week let us relax a bit, after five cities in a row, in a large and ultra modern apartment, with a balcony overlooking the main square. The town is bigger than we expected and, like any other Spanish city, it has hidden gems to be discovered. It is a resort to which Spanish holiday makers go, and there’s a wide range of ages and types of tourist visiting.

Young folk from Cadiz also pour in at the weekend, drawn by El Puerto’s clubs and bars, of which there are many, so the atmosphere, lively at all times, becomes slightly raucous on Friday and Saturday nights, without ever taking on the edge of incipient violence, which can often be the case in the UK. Beggars and buskers are frequently in evidence – the latter tending to become familiar faces, including the lady who wanders about singing constantly. She could be in Morningside Road, but for the fact that its flamenco songs she’s wailing.

We took a tour of the local Castillo San Marcos, a 13th Century stronghold which is now owned by Caballero, a diverse and successful drinks company. The castle features a lovely Moorish arched ceiling in the main hall, which has a beautiful leather embossed mihrab (which indicates the direction of Mecca) at one end. When King Alfonso the Wise took over the castle in the 13th Century, when the Moors were chucked out of Spain, as was normal he built a Christian church over the footprint of the existing mosque. By the 17th Century, the altar was crumbling, and it took the supporting wall down with it, revealing the 10th Century mihrab for the first time in 700 years. Because he had walled it up, rather than destroying it, it was and still is almost perfectly preserved – no wonder they called him the Wise!

Another part of the city we investigated was the outlying area of Puerto Sherry. This is a vast marina, with luxury hotels and apartments on one side of the harbour. On the other side, the ambitious development obviously stalled abruptly, as occupied apartments are cheek by jowl with unfinished ones, some with black hole windows and sprayed graffitti. The virtual absence of other humans in this large area made us feel like maybe there’d been some sort of cataclysmic global event, which we’d been spared because we’d been in the toilet or something. Weird place.

A 20 minute ride on the regular catamaran ferry takes you to Cadiz, the historic port on Spain’s Atlantic south coast. We had been looking forward to visiting Cadiz, which does have some lovely squares, a huge cathedral and very long and straight streets of unusual apartments disappearing into the distance. However, Cadiz seemed to us a city which tolerates visitors, just about, rather than welcoming them, and we’re glad that we went on a day trip, rather than staying there. It’s a heavy duty sea port, with some unlovely areas outside the old centre (a bit like Edinburgh) and you’d possibly have to be careful where you ventured on a night out.

Jerez de la Frontera, one apex of the triangle of Spain’s sherry making region, was just a 10 minute train ride away from Puerto, and seemed to us on a fairly superficial view to be likely to be a nice place to stay in, as we wandered round its small but lovely Alcazar Palace, and visited a sherry bodega for a tour and educational tasting.

Our week in El Puerto de Santa Maria has flown by, and again its somewhere we’d definitely come back to, particularly for the great atmosphere in the old town at night. Jerez would definitely benefit from more time too, and Cadiz was interesting for a day trip, but with little to hasten a return, in our book.

My dozen favourite images from our stay in El Puerto de Santa Maria, which included trips to Cadiz and Jerez de la Frontera, are included in the gallery below. Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger image.

Image Gallery