Cádiz

Pescaíto frito

An assortment of small fish and seafood, floured and fried in olive oil, traditionally eaten from a paper cone.

Small whole fish such as boquerones (anchovies) and pieces of squid or choco (cuttlefish) are dusted in a fine wheat flour and fried quickly in hot olive oil, producing a light, non-greasy crust. Cádiz Bay's abundant catch and long-standing frying tradition make this the city's default way of eating fish.

A thin, pale golden crust rather than a thick batter, and fish served hot and freshly fried.

Freidurías (fry shops) and bars throughout the old town, often sold to take away.

Tortillitas de camarones

Thin, lacy fritters made from a wheat and chickpea flour batter studded with whole tiny shrimp.

The batter, mixing wheat and chickpea flour with chopped onion and parsley, is spread thin in the pan and fried until crisp and lacy at the edges; the tiny grey shrimp used are cooked whole, shell included. The style is closely associated with Cádiz and neighbouring San Fernando rather than Andalusia generally.

A flat, crisp, almost see-through disc rather than a thick, fluffy fritter.

Bars and freidurías across the city, particularly near the bay.

Almadraba tuna

Bluefin tuna caught using the ancient almadraba trap-net system off the coast near Barbate and Cádiz.

The almadraba technique channels migrating bluefin tuna into a fixed maze of nets during their spring passage through the Strait of Gibraltar, a method used along this coast since Phoenician times. Prized cuts such as the fatty ventresca (belly) are often served raw, seared or lightly grilled to let the fish speak for itself.

Menus that specify almadraba or ventresca rather than generic 'atún'.

Seafood restaurants in Cádiz, especially in spring during the tuna run.

Cazón en adobo

Cubes of marinated dogfish, floured and fried, a classic Cádiz bar tapa.

Small pieces of cazón (a type of dogfish) are marinated in vinegar, garlic, oregano and cumin, then coated in flour and deep-fried into bite-sized golden cubes. It is one of the most common tapas in Cádiz's bars, distinct from the plain frito in its tangy, spiced marinade.

A firm, meaty texture rather than flaky white fish, with a clear vinegar-garlic tang.

Tapas bars throughout the old town.

Ortiguillas

Sea anemones, battered and fried whole, a distinctly Cádiz Bay delicacy.

Snakelocks sea anemones are gathered from the rocky shoreline, coated in a light batter and deep-fried whole. The result is crisp outside with a briny, almost iodine-like interior that is unlike any other fried seafood on the coast.

Freshly fried, still-hot portions; they lose their character quickly once cold.

Seafood bars along the bay, particularly in El Puerto de Santa María and Cádiz itself.

Manzanilla and sherry

Dry, flor-aged wines from the sherry triangle just inland, drunk chilled alongside seafood tapas.

Manzanilla, made in Sanlúcar de Barrameda on the Atlantic coast, ages under a layer of flor yeast that gives it a distinct saline, slightly bitter edge; Cádiz sits within reach of the wider sherry triangle of Jerez, Sanlúcar and El Puerto de Santa María. Locally it is drunk cold, in small glasses, as an accompaniment to food rather than a stand-alone tasting.

A pale, dry glass served properly chilled, not the sweet cream sherries aimed at export markets.

Any traditional bar in Cádiz; a day trip to Sanlúcar or Jerez for bodega visits.

Mercado Central de Abastos

One of Spain's oldest covered markets, built in 1837 on the site of a former convent orchard.

Cádiz's city council commissioned the neoclassical market building in 1837, designed by Torcuato Benjumeda, after the site — near Plaza de las Flores — was acquired following the Mendizábal disentailment of church land. It remains a working fish and produce market, with several stalls now serving tapas and oysters to eat on the spot.

The fish hall in particular, where the morning's Bay catch is laid out before lunchtime restaurants buy from it.

Plaza de las Flores, in the historic centre.

The torres miradores

Lookout towers built onto the roofs of merchant houses so owners could watch the bay for their own ships coming in.

Around 134 of these survive across the old town, and they are the local building type. A merchant's house combined trade and home in one building — storage and business below, family rooms above — and then a tower on the roof, sometimes flagged, from which the bay could be watched and an incoming ship recognised. Knowing which vessel was arriving mattered to people whose money was on it. The towers vary from plain boxes to elaborate glazed pavilions, and because they sit above the roofline you have to keep looking up to find them. Torre Tavira, the tallest, is the one usually visited, and from any rooftop the pattern of the others across the old town becomes obvious.

They are the clearest physical evidence of what Cádiz was: a city whose wealth depended on ships, with the watching of them built into its houses.

This is commercial life expressed as roof furniture, and it survives here in numbers you will not find in an inland Spanish city.

Look for: The difference between the towers — open arcaded ones, fully glazed ones, and plain unroofed terraces — and which direction each one faces.

Wendelse tip: Get up one tower early on. Seeing the peninsula from above, with the sea on both sides at once, does more for your understanding of the city than an extra church.

18th century, the American trade boom · 45–60 minutes for a tower visit; the spotting continues all week · A clear day, when the bay and the far shore are both visible

Cádiz Cathedral, from outside and from the sea wall

A cathedral that took over a century to finish and visibly changed its mind, with a yellow-tiled dome facing the Atlantic.

Begun in 1722 on the confidence of the American trade, the cathedral took over a century to finish, passing through several architects, revised designs and long pauses when money ran short. You can read the result: the lower parts are Baroque, warm and modelled, while the upper stages and the dome are cooler and more classical. It stands in the weather, too — the seaward elevations show the wear you would expect of stone facing the Atlantic, and conservation work is often somewhere on the building. Its best side is not the show façade on its square but the back, where it stands directly against the Campo del Sur sea wall with waves below it and a row of painted houses running away along the front.

It keeps time with the city. A building that slow records changing fortunes and changing fashions together, one stage above the other.

Look for: The join between the heavier, darker lower masonry and the plainer upper stages, and how much rougher the stone looks on the elevations facing the sea.

Wendelse tip: Walk round to Campo del Sur and look back at it from a few hundred metres along the wall. That view — dome, sea wall, ocean — is the one that explains it.

Begun 1722, completed in the 1830s — Baroque below, Neoclassical above · 30 minutes outside, more if you go in or climb the tower · Late afternoon, with the sun coming off the Atlantic onto the dome

El Pópulo and the two barrios

The oldest surviving quarter, entered through medieval gates, and the fishermen's district of La Viña next to it.

El Pópulo is what was left inside the medieval walls: a very small grid of lanes still entered through stone archways, tight enough that you can touch both sides in places, with the Roman theatre found underneath it and the cathedral pressing against one edge. La Viña, further west, is the opposite — lower, later, laid out for fishing families on reclaimed vineyard ground, with wider streets, more sky and a straight run down to the Caleta beach. Walking from one to the other in fifteen minutes gives you the whole social range of the old city, and neither is a preserved quarter: both are ordinary places to live, loudest in the evening and during Carnival.

They show that Cádiz's density is not decorative. Street width here tracks who lived on the street and when it was built.

Look for: The surviving medieval gateways into El Pópulo, and the point where the tight old grid gives way to La Viña's looser streets.

Wendelse tip: Go through both in the early evening rather than at midday. They are residential quarters and they only make sense when people are out in them.

45–60 minutes on foot, unhurried · Early evening