Set between the sea and the mountain, between the meadows of the Guadalete River, the marshlands and the pastures, a landscape of open albariza horizons, modelled on rainfed crop rotation and vineyards, on the stamp of mature farming models, on the farmhands’ timely work… it draws the profile of the Cádiz countryside as it travels through Jerez.
A historic crossroads for bidirectional paths between Cádiz and Seville, Jerez de la Frontera pairs wine and flamenco, a magical coupling: a combination that is taken to the limit in the different areas of representation that define its urban framework and anthropise its landscape.
Before the wealth and diversity of given cultural phenomena spread out globally and were even suitably praised due to the clichés or reiterations by the immense power of the media, the essential traits of those cultural situations became more precise and especially those referring to their links with a territory; with the specific space where they were forged. Cultures such as that of wine-making and expressions as relevant as flamenco, in a setting that outlines the Campiña de Jerez (province of Cádiz) make up an inexplicable cultural fact away from the restrictions established by its territorial condition. It is a triad that is mixed from a given social, economic and cultural condition that has grown to the rhythm of the passage of time, projecting its specific expressive forms and ways of life onto its appearance1.
This close relationship between production activity and cultural expressions in Jerez has become a phenomenon that can be perceived from various scales. A universe that is omnipresent in its status as a large town, whose appearance takes it to the urban environment to the same extent as its activities define it as rural, in the agricultural buildings that delimit its wine-making landscape or in the relevant architecture relating to wine-production that directly affects its structure.
However, it is in the old ventas (traditional road-side bar that serves home-cooked meal) on the outskirts, in the many country houses that open their doors with the arrival of the new must to serve food and drink, or in the daily activities of the humble tabancos (traditional establishment from Jerez that mixes the social concept of the tavern and the commercial vocation of a wine store) that still exist in neighbourhoods like Santiago or San Miguel, where this link between wine and flamenco has to be seen as a fundamental part of the coexistence rituals.
A historic crossroads for bidirectional paths between Cádiz and Seville, Jerez de la Frontera pairs wine and flamenco, a magical coupling: a combination that is taken to the limit in the different areas of representation that define its urban framework and anthropise its landscape.
It is in the tabancos and mostos (traditional establishment from Jerez that serves wine and home-cooked meal), in those intimate and neighbourly strongholds, where wine and flamenco find their core, because beyond the imposed clichés, these meeting spaces exude undertones of the human situation, earning a living, sharing their lives and singing about them. With nothing more than the palms of their hands, their whistles, their knuckles on the counter, the singing is alternated with conversation, jokes and comments in a high level of interpersonal communication, transmission, tension and emotional provocation which is usually blended with the social lubricant of the wine. This has led to the best times of coexistence and has given the singing its uncontrolled aspect. You only need to walk down its streets or paths that mark out its fields to realise that in Jerez this is not an isolated instance.
These spaces have to be understood as reference models for social identity, preferentially masculine identity, that define experiences, attitudes and behaviours; such as spaces, in short, for ritualization, interrelationship, social transmission and group formation that, in the case of the tabancos, have been languishing, and have mostly disappeared, but that also form part of Jerez cultural history.
A mixture of artistic greatness and sober tradition melt into each other with each step and at every turn. The successive contrasts that fill the urban outline of Jerez give it a personal appearance, complemented by the architecture of its bodegas from which exultant aromas of wine emerge to crystallize with the cultural heritage that areas such as Santiago or San Miguel exude. They are key points in the geography of flamenco for being the birthplace and source of singing and great creators and performers of the cante jondo.
In the heart of these neighbourhoods, there are now hardly any cases of one of the most important examples in popular Jerez culture; of such importance in the consumption of wine in the area: the tabancos. Traditional, very masculinised establishments that were for selling wine in the city itself and that, in Jerez, have nothing to do with the definition offered in various dictionaries as a traveling or street stall, because if anything characterises the tabanco it is its tavern-like vocation, of a small wine producer where wine was poured from various small or medium-sized red oak barrels (botas), arranged in the first or the second row.
