Hey everybody it's Daniel and welcome to Cádiz or
as apparently we say it in English
Cadeeezzz I had never heard this
actually I knew very little about Cádiz
until about two hours ago
no wait, less, one hour ago I was
just at home in Madrid a few days ago
thinking I need to leave town I looked
at the map I found something I had never
seen before I bought a ticket and here
we are in Cádiz and it's great I have
learned a lot this morning on Wikipedia
about the history of Cádiz for example
did you know that this is the oldest
city in Western Europe it was originally
populated by the Phoenicians in 1104 BC
which is more than three thousand years
ago so it's an old old place of course
there's not much left from the
Phoenicians at this point. It was also
occupied by the Romans the Moors the
Visigoths possibly the Byzantines lots
and lots of different people maybe not
the Visigoths. The Byzantines at least
whoever the Byzantines were. Once again
I'm not a historian so do not use this
as you know part of your doctoral thesis
but uh yeah it's been here for more than
three thousand years it was considered
to be the far west the wild west of the
Roman Empire at one point there's a line
from the Roman poet Juvenal talking
about everything between Cádiz and the
Ganges this was the Far Far West of what
they knew from the world and the Ganges
in India was far East so here we are
we're going to see some stuff around the
city it's going to be great
okay
so as I was saying before a couple of
hours ago
I knew virtually nothing about Cádiz and
well let me tell you what I did know
number one I knew that
Lord Byron came here a couple hundred
years ago Lord Byron was an English
Romantic poet he was here I think it was
around the Year 1800 but not exactly
certain and he was just an aristocratic
kind of guy having adventures travelling
far away from England and of course I
think he's actually Scottish I apologize
sorry Scotland um also you know he was
here it kind of he decided Spain was
a great place, which I agree with fully. He
wrote this poem about how basically
Spanish women are more attractive and
more passionate than English women the
poem is pretty stupid I don't know sorry
Lord Byron if you're watching this I
think you're kind of overrated but it is
an interesting historical document not
very much has changed as far as that
goes
lots of people still think that Spanish
women are more attractive and more
passionate than English women maybe
there's a good reason why also the thing
that I knew about this city was about
the constitution of Cádiz from 1812
I still am NOT an expert in the
constitution of Cadiz during 1812 but
apparently what happened is that the
Napoleon put his brother you know Joseph
Bonaparte as king of Spain the original
king whoever was king before just kind
of said okay whatever
no problem Joseph Bonaparte and
they formed kind of a government in
exile here in Cadiz which created this
constitution this was also related to
the war of 1812 in the US and the war of
1812 here in Spain I talked about it in
one of my videos a couple of days ago
the uprising in Madrid. May 2nd 1812 and
yeah this was kind of the seat of the
Spanish government for just a couple of
years during this war for independence
as they would say here in Spain against
the French empire in the constitution of
Cadiz was was a very liberal
at the time it had things like you know
universal male suffrage which was a
pretty liberal idea in 1812 and it never
actually went into effect but it's kind
of one of these historical moments in
spain that you always hear about in any
sort of history lesson so yeah there we
go
Lord Byron and the Constitution of Cádiz
that's the extent of my knowledge I'll
tell you a little bit more in a minute
One of the other things I knew was it's windy and I think we're finding out that can
be very true it's a small Peninsula here
and it's I guess the Atlantic more than the Mediterranean
yeah, wow, pretty windy okay so we're here outside
the Cathedral this Cathedral is unusual
I think it's because it's newer than other Cathedrals here in Spain
this is from the 18th and 19th at a
hundred years build the cathedral but I
guess kind of normal thing for cathedrals and
according to Wikipedia it has some of the
greatest religious treasures of any
Cathedral in Spain I assume that means
like statues of virgins and possibly
relics from different Saints things like
that in any case it's not five euros to
go in and I don't really want to spend
the day in a dark cathedral when it's so nice and
sunny outside I'm gonna see if I can go
find a beach or something like that the
other interesting thing about this
Cathedral is that on the other side
right back here it's just the ocean it's
or
on the beach you know the ocean so I've
never really seen a cathedral is close
is right on the edge of the ocean so hey, why
not it is the Cathedral of Santa Cruz Sobre
Las Aguas I believe it's called like
officially
now it is called the cathedral of
Cadiz yeah it's cool. just walk back here you've got a
kind of original city walls
One of the nice things about Cadiz is that it's always
small streets all these small streets
and walking around on these small
streets most of them are pedestrian or
as a maximum he's got little motorcycles
or something like that and then you have
no idea where you are but suddenly you
come out into some big plaza the
plazas are pretty nice in any case if I
had to describe Cádiz in a couple of
words one of them would probably be
dilapidated it's it reminds me of Lisbon
for example it's the city where where
they don't maintain the buildings as
much as some others and you know you
just have this kind of decaying look to
it in some places not everywhere but in
some places anyway well part of the
charm of Lisbon and it's part of the
charm of Cadiz
also you just have some things which
need a little bit more paint but they're
not getting it, as you can see. Anyway
I'm gonna take a look at the City Hall
now we'll see there see you there in a
minute okay this is City Hall this is
one of these big Plaza I was talking
about earlier we're here on the small
streets and then suddenly you're on the
big Plaza you've got
some bars around here you've got a
little market of some kind looks like artisan
stuff some people are selling here. It's pretty nice
then of course the ocean's right
over here because from the Cathedral to
here is just a very short distance but
since it's just a small Peninsula
you've got ocean on all sides anyway not
really sure what else there is to see
around Cádiz there are a few big museums
well there will be one big Museum the
of Cádiz there's the big theater
theater of Manuel de Falla, he was
one of the important Spanish composers
and then there's just these old
neighborhoods which I guess is what I'm
going to take a look at next is I think
I can walk through some of theses old
neighbourhoods on the way to Playa de la
Las Victorias which they say is the best
urban beach in Europe
okay so while we're on the way to the
beach there's a couple more things I
wanted to talk about one is Hercules
according to one of the Greek myths
at least Hercules
founded the city of Cádiz and the origin
of the myth of The Pillars of Hercules
is here in Cáidz of course when I heard
the Pillars of Hercules for the first
time I heard it referring to the Rock of
Gibraltar which is not terribly close to
here I mean it's close it's a couple
hours away I guess by train or whatever
The Pillars of Hercules are actually on
the Spanish royal coat of arms it's an
important thing in Spanish you know
legend or whatever and the idea being
that the Pillars of Hercules were
guarding... Were on both sides of
the Straits of Gibraltar and the idea was
you did not go further they had the
slogan you know Ne Plus Ultra on them
which when the Spanish discovered the
new world in you know 1492
Carlos V
of the most important Spanish Kings put
his official slogan plus ultra... Plus
ultra meaning go further beyond Ne Plus
Ultra was no further beyond do not go
any further so Plus Ultra you know further
beyond always go further so that's one
thing about The Pillars of Hercules they
also say that the Pillars of Hercules
might be the two bars on the dollar sign
actually the Spanish doubloons I believe
it was had sort of a symbol on one side
of them if you know if I have the story
correct I'm not a historian again and
there is debate about this way now to
Spanish doubloons or something similar
had the two pillars of Hercules and then
a flag going around them and that could
be the origin of the US dollar sign in
any case nobody really knows what the
origin of the US dollar sign is that's
just one theory that I've seen in lots
of places other than that the the
Hercules thing you know since Hercules
was the son of Zeus and not a real
person I guess it doesn't really matter
this is all just legend anyway I checked
on Wikipedia there is no indication on
Wikipedia that Hercules was a real
person so you know whatever anyway his
tenth labor was apparently out here in
Cádiz in legend other than that it's
interesting that there's also the Camino
de Santiago here the St James the Way
of Saint James is here. Apparently you
could come all the way from the Canary
Islands by a boat and then you could walk
from here all the way to Santiago on the
north of Spain it's a religious
pilgrimage that a lot of people do
most people do it in the north of Spain
along the French... from the French border
along the north coast but I guess you
can do it from any other point so
there's these yellow arrows
all over the city that indicates the
route
anyway it's Beach time
okay so I made it to the beach playa de
las Victoria's I got oh I don't know
it's a little bit windy still a nice
sunny day there are not very many people
but you know I don't want to show too
much because there's topless girls
everywhere and I don't want YouTube to
ban me that would be vulgar anyway I
hope you've enjoyed this video I hope
you find some time at some point to come
to caddy and enjoy some pescaíto
frito or something similar and not much
else subscribe to my channel I do videos
about Madrid I do videos about English
I do lots of videos, videos about lots of stuff
and have a great day
until next time I'm Daniel I'm out. Talk to you soon. Bye!