Barbate

Self-catering accommodation is the most popular option in Barbate, with apartments offering unrivalled views over the coastline and sea, and villas offering gardens, swimming pools and ultimate exclusivity during your holiday. Holiday homes can be a great choice for families and larger groups as it often works out to be cost beneficial.

A very popular holiday destination, especially for Spanish holiday makers, Barbate has some of the most unspoilt beaches along the Cadiz coast. Due to the influx of tourists that descend upon the town during the summer season, there is a sufficient number of hotels, guesthouses, hostels and self-catering accommodation providing lovely places to stay.

Every year in May, after the first full moon, fishermen from towns on the Cadiz part of the Costa de la Luz, including Barbate, Zahara de los Atunes, Conil de la Frontera, and Tarifa, set up a complicated labyrinth of nets off the Atlantic coast, called the almadraba, to catch blue-fin tuna. This is a major social and gastronomic event, providing essential (if seasonal) work for fishermen, packing factories, restaurants along the coast.

Lovers of tuna come from all over Spain to enjoy the various festivals and routes celebrating the almadraba season. The towns have their own Rutas del Atun, which list restaurants and tapas bars offering inventive, beautifully-presented atun de almadraba tapas at reasonable a set price, for example 4 euros; maps are available to show you where participating restaurants are.

Comes provide a daily bus service from Cadiz city to Barbate. Calling at San Fernando, Chiclana, San Andres golf, El Colorado to Conil de la Frontera, continuing on to Vejer, La Barca de Vejer, Barbate, Zahara de las Atunes and Atlanterra. Return service at 08.15 and 18.45. Aditionally there are six services a day between Conil and Atlanterra.

The Tómbola de Trafalgar is a site of geological interest, with a small island joined to the mainland by a sandy tombolo, or bank of sand. The island is called the Cabo de Trafalgar, and its name became a household word after the famous 1805 Battle of Trafalgar.

Sendero de los Acantilados is a linear route of around 6km along the coastal footpath that links Barbate to Caños de Meca, with wonderful views along the coast and out to sea. Don't go too the near the cliff edge, since there are sheer drops of up to 100m down to the sea.

Torre de Meca, a 15th-century watchtower, was built as part of a coastal defensive system to warn of a Berber pirate invasion. Watchkeepers would either light a fire or send smoke signals to neighbouring towers to communicate danger. Just outside of Caños de Meca, there is footpath that leads to it; see our section on walks.

From Barbate take the CA2143 to Caños de Meca. This is the principal road through the park and it passes through the Pinar de la Breña. You can stop off this route and go for a walk in the pine forest; at Km 3.5 is a forestry track, the Sendero del Torre de Tajo.

The Breña pine forest is made up mainly of umbrella pines (pinus pinea) planted in the late 19th century. There is a significant population of the endangered prickly juniper (juniperus oxycedrus subsp. macrocarpa), the second largest area of this juniper in Andalucia after the Doñana National Park.

Located on the approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar, the park is an important stopping place for migrating birds, as well as providing an important nesting site for various species of birds on its cliffs, such as cattle egrets, little egrets and yellow-legged gulls.

There are many hotels to choose from in and around Caños de Meca. Villages close to the park include Conil de la Frontera, further west along the coast, and the delightful inland village of Vejer de la Frontera.

Created in 1989, the Breña y Marismas de Barbate park is Andalucia's second largest coastal reserve and has one of the most spectacular stretches of rocky cliffs along the Andalucian Atlantic coastline, with stunning views over the sea and to the rocky headland of Cape Trafalgar and its lighthouse.

Barbate Marina information. Latitude: 36* 1'6"N - Longitude: 5*55'45"W - VHF: CH9, Harbour Entrance width: 150 M depth: 3.5 M, 421 Moorings, 6 - 20 M deep. Things to see: Visigoth hermitage San Ambrosio, natural parks.

The municipality of Barbate boasts some of the most beautiful beaches on the Costa de la Luz inlcuding los Caños de Meca and Zahara de los Atunes. The golden sand of Playa de Zahora stretches from Playa del Palmar to the Trafalgar lighthouse at the Cabo Trafalgar. The beach is flat and rocky but protected from the strong winds in this area making it popular with those who enjoy swimming in the sea.

Barbate is a town of some 20.000 people on the Costa de la Luz, 40km north of Tarifa. This modern town, (often called Barbate de Franco because the ex-dictator spent many summers here), has grown up around a fishing industry which goes back to Roman times when the fish-salting industry was at its peak.