This week’s travel dream: A go-it-alone gateway to historic Spain

Cádiz feels utterly detached from the rest of Spain, said Paul Richardson in Condé Nast Traveller (U.K.). A historic port city that dangles out into the Atlantic on the country’s southwestern coast, this little-visited marvel has an “offbeat charm and weather-beaten beauty” all its own. Every year, all of Cádiz gets swept up in a two-week Carnival that specializes in acerbic political satire, and last year the city threw a major bicentennial celebration in honor of a short-lived Spanish constitution that was more boisterously devoted to individual rights than anything devised in 1787 Philadelphia. This lovable, exhilarating town emits such a unique energy that I swear I could feel it just crossing the bridge that connects Cádiz to the mainland.

The recent bicentennial celebration apparently had an impact. Even though Spain’s unemployment crisis has hit Cádiz hard, the city “seemed busier, cleaner, more cheerful than I remembered,” with a handful of new hotels now catering to discerning travelers. I immediately sought out one of the many freidurías, homely little joints serving up a variety of fried and battered seafood that leaves English fish-and-chips in the dust. Fortunately, it’s easy to burn off calories in Cádiz, because the way to discover it “involves roaming the streets in a random manner.” History runs deep here, since Cádiz might be Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited city and once served as the principal gateway for ships traveling between the Old World and the New. Several baroque churches are worth visiting, particularly the chapel of Our Lady of Carmen, with its “magnificently gloomy El Greco portrait of St. Francis.” The Old Town district feels like a village—car-free, slow-paced, and calming.

But I discover new corners of Cádiz on every visit. This time I ventured into the run-down gypsy quarter, and then into the fishing district and “a street where fishing rods stand like flagpoles on every balcony.” Nearby I passed a house throwing a raging party, a reminder that Cádiz is still “a hedonistic city,” a place where the typical citizen is “a lover of food, drink, and conversation, roughly in that order.” It wouldn’t be the last time Cádiz reminded me of Havana.

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At Parador de Cádiz (parador.es), doubles start at $142.