Jerez de la Frontera: City of fortified wine

As with most towns and cities in Andalucía, it was the Phoenicians who are believed to have founded what is now Jerez de la Frontera, a settlement that they would call Xera, which some historians believe could be the possible capital of the Tartessian kingdom, and even of the location of the civilisation of Atlantis.

Other theories put forward suggest that Jerez was a Roman settlement called Ceret, which took its name from the phonetics associated with the name of the goddess Ceren, although, as with Tartessos and Atlantis, there is no factual evidence to support this.

According to Michael Jacobs, author of numerous books about Spain and Andalucía, the city's name derives from its Roman name of Xeres, a "name that was corrupted to Sherrish by the Moors", who occupied the town until 1264.

The name had been recorded in some Arab documents with various different spellings, including Seris, Sherich and Sherish.

When the Christians retook the city in 1264, it became known as Xerez in medieval Spanish. As with many other places in this part of Andalucía, the addition of 'de la Frontera' in 1379 signified the western frontier of the Moorish Kingdom of Granada.

With the eventual conquest of Moorish Spain in 1492, Xerez lost its status as a frontier city, but did not lose its name.

In the 18TH century, the orthographic reform of the Royal Academy replaced the 'X' with the grapheme 'J', resulting in its current name of Jerez de la Frontera.

The name of the province's famous fortified wine, jerez, (sherry in English) represents an adaptation of the city's Arabic name, Sherish. These wines were first exported to England in the late 15th century, after which, numerous foreign - especially English - merchants, known as 'sherry barons', settled in the city.

The 19th century was a period of great economic strength, due above all to the alliances of English exporters with Jerez vintners: today, the famous sherries of Jerez de la Frontera are popular all over the world.