Cadiz or Marbella?

The two are close on beaches but feel different. Cadiz has the Atlantic on every side: a sheltered cove between castles in the old town, the long golden sweep of Playa Victoria, and the wild, empty strands of the Costa de la Luz within an hour's drive. The levante wind can blow sand across them for days at a time.

Marbella's 27km of shore is more organised, with greyish sand, calm water, sunbeds, beach clubs and chiringuitos grilling sardines. Go to Cadiz for open, natural beaches and to Marbella for beaches with every service laid on.

Cadiz eats better day to day. Almadraba tuna, cones of fried fish, shrimp fritters and cold manzanilla are found all over the old town, and it is hard to eat badly there.

Marbella has a wider range but less consistency. A tier of tasting-menu kitchens and international restaurants serves the Golden Mile, but many places near the port serve tired menus to passing visitors, so the good tapas take some looking for in the Casco Antiguo.

Cadiz has far more to see. It claims three thousand years of history, from Phoenician sarcophagi in the Museo de Cádiz to the Roman theatre in El Pópulo, along with watchtowered merchant houses, the gold-domed cathedral and the camera obscura in the Torre Tavira. That fills two or three good days.

Marbella's heritage is a pretty whitewashed quarter around the Plaza de los Naranjos, a prints museum and a Roman villa outside town, which together take about an afternoon.

Marbella is the place to go out. In summer, beach clubs with DJs carry on into evening parties, and Puerto Banús fills with a moneyed crowd at champagne bars and clubs until dawn. The scene is polished and expensive, and it largely shuts down from November to March.

Nights in Cadiz are about late tapas and drinks on the squares and the Playa Victoria promenade, with only a small club scene. The exception is Carnival in February, when the whole city parties through the night for ten days.

Both have a lot to offer outdoors, but different landscapes. Cadiz is flat and watery. Flamingos and spoonbills live in the salt marshes of the bay, Tarifa's kitesurfing and whale-watching are about an hour and a quarter away, and the Sierra de Grazalema and Doñana are further out.

In Marbella the mountains start at the edge of town. You can climb La Concha with views to Morocco, walk among the fir forests of the Sierra de las Nieves or try the Caminito del Rey, though the coast itself is heavily built up.

Both make excellent bases, and the difference is mainly in how you travel. From Cadiz the train runs to the sherry bodegas of Jerez and on to Seville, and a ferry crosses to El Puerto de Santa María. The white towns and Baelo Claudia need a car.

From Marbella almost everything means driving: Ronda over its gorge, Málaga's Picasso Museum, Gibraltar, and a long day to the Alhambra in Granada.

Marbella offers families more. The sheltered town beaches and long flat promenade are easy with buggies, many complexes are built around pools, and there is a safari park, a zoo, water parks and an aquarium along the coast, all easy to reach by car.

Cadiz has the wide, lifeguarded Playa Victoria, the calm water at La Caleta and a flat old town with shady parks. Beyond that there is little made for children, so older ones will be climbing castle walls rather than going on rides.

Cadiz is much easier without a car. The old town is flat, mostly free of traffic and small enough to walk from shore to shore, buses run the length of the isthmus to the beach, and trains and the bay catamaran leave from the centre.

Marbella stretches along a motorway from San Pedro to Cabopino, with no train and slow buses. Most visitors end up hiring a car or using taxis between their hotel, the port and the old town.

Marbella is far better for shopping, especially at the top end. Puerto Banús has a strip of designer fashion and jewellery shops, with large malls nearby, and the old town adds linen, leather and ceramics.

Cadiz has nothing like that. Calle Ancha and the streets around Plaza de las Flores hold chains and family-run shops, and the best things to bring home are a hand-painted fan or a bottle of fino from the market area.

Cadiz is clearly the cheaper stay. Fried fish, sherry, trains and sights all cost little, and the main expense is the old town's small supply of hotel rooms in summer and Carnival week.

In Marbella, high summer pushes hotel and villa rates up steeply, and sunbeds and dinners around the port add up quickly. Its old-town tapas bars charge normal Andalusian prices, and many visitors save by staying in a neighbouring town.

Live performance in Cadiz comes out of the city itself. Alegrías, one of flamenco's brightest forms, were born here, and each February the Gran Teatro Falla judges the satirical Carnival choirs, whose songs mock politicians and neighbours alike. The theatre stays busy with plays the rest of the year, but for opera or a symphony orchestra you need Seville.

In Marbella most of the stage arrives with summer and is brought in from elsewhere. Big international pop and rock names play an open-air amphitheatre set in an old quarry, while the flamenco in old-town restaurants is put on for visitors rather than drawn from a local tradition. For classical music or deeper flamenco, people drive to Málaga.

Marbella is better set up for a restful stay. Spa resorts, yoga retreats and detox clinics line the Golden Mile and the hills behind it, and from October to May the town is mild and calm. High summer is a different place, crowded and loud.

Cadiz has no spa scene of its own. Resort spas are a drive away at Novo Sancti Petri, and there are Arab-style baths in Jerez. What Cadiz offers instead is its pace: siestas, long lunches and sunset walks on the sea walls.