Jerez de la Frontera or Salamanca?

Here the gap is as wide as it gets. From Jerez, the Costa de la Luz is close: Valdelagrana and El Puerto de Santa María are a short trip away, and Cádiz's La Caleta and Playa de la Victoria are about half an hour by train. The long, fine-sanded beaches at Sanlúcar, Chipiona and La Barrosa are within an hour. The Atlantic stays cool even in summer, and the Levante wind can make some days rough, but a beach day is easy to fit into a city stay.

Salamanca lies on the Castilian plain, a long day's drive from the coast. In summer, the most it offers is a swim in a municipal pool or at a river beach on the Tormes.

Jerez has a slight edge here. Its food is built around sherry: fino and oloroso poured in the bodegas and from the barrel in the old tabancos, kidneys and oxtail cooked in sherry, and fried fish and prawns from the nearby coast.

Salamanca's table is inland and meat-based. It centres on ibérico ham from nearby Guijuelo, hornazo, roast suckling pig and morucha beef, with red wines from Toro and Ribera del Duero. Its strength is generous, informal tapas around the Plaza Mayor and Calle Van Dyck, but seafood is weak. Neither city offers much beyond its own regional tradition.

Salamanca is the stronger city for sightseeing. Its whole old town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in glowing Villamayor sandstone. It holds one of Spain's finest baroque squares, the Plateresque façade of one of Europe's oldest universities, Old and New Cathedrals side by side, and the Casa de las Conchas. The stone is floodlit after dark, which gives the centre a second life at night.

Jerez offers a shorter list, but it has things Salamanca lacks. The Almohad Alcázar with its Arab baths, the sherry bodegas as working heritage, and the dressage horses of the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art all belong to Jerez alone. Each city takes two or three days, but Salamanca fills them with more.

Salamanca is the clear winner for a night out. Tens of thousands of students and Spanish-language learners fill the bars around the Plaza Mayor, Calle Bordadores and Gran Vía from Thursday to Saturday, and dance bars and small clubs stay open past 3am. The crowd is young, and the city goes quiet in high summer once term ends.

Nights in Jerez are slower. They mean late tapas, copas and tabancos around Plaza del Arenal and Calle Larga, with few clubs. The exception is the Feria del Caballo in May, when the casetas carry on until dawn.

Jerez has more within easy reach. The Sierra de Grazalema's gorges and trails are a little over an hour away, and boats cross from Sanlúcar to the edge of Doñana's wetlands. The salt marshes of the Bay of Cádiz are good for birdwatching, and the coast towards Tarifa is known for kitesurfing. Riding in the vineyard country is easy to arrange.

Salamanca's landscapes begin about an hour out, and you will need a car to reach them. The chestnut forests of the Sierra de Francia and Las Batuecas lie to the south, and the granite canyon of the Arribes del Duero lies on the Portuguese border. Nearer the city, there are only the riverside paths along the Tormes.

Both cities make good bases, but Jerez reaches bigger names more easily. Seville is about an hour by train and Cádiz about half an hour. El Puerto and Sanlúcar complete the sherry triangle, and with a car Arcos, Vejer, Ronda and even Gibraltar are within range.

Salamanca's day trips are quieter historic towns of Old Castile. Ávila's walls and Zamora's Romanesque churches are each about an hour away, and you can add Ciudad Rodrigo or the half-timbered villages of La Alberca and Mogarraz. These are rewarding, but many of the villages are hard to reach without a car.

Jerez is a little better with children. Its zoo and botanical garden is one of the better ones in Spain, and the dancing horses at the equestrian school go down well. In summer, the wide, gently sloping beaches nearby are a big help.

Salamanca's appeal for children is more of a game played around the monuments: hunting for the frog on the University façade and the astronaut on the New Cathedral, then climbing the towers. It has no zoo or aquarium, and its winters are bitterly cold. Both towns are uncomfortably hot on July and August afternoons.

Salamanca is the easier city to get around. Nearly every sight is in a largely pedestrianised old town you can cross in about twenty minutes, so few visitors ever need a bus. The cobbled slopes are the only drawback, and they need care with a pushchair.

The centre of Jerez is flat and compact too, and the airport is only minutes away by train. The difference is that much of a Jerez trip happens outside town, and the white towns, the sierra and many beaches are slow by bus. Plan on hiring a car more often there.

Neither city is a shopping destination. Each has a street of Spanish chains, and the worthwhile buys are local. In Jerez, that means sherry and brandy from the bodegas, saddlery and leather riding boots made for the horse world, and flamenco dresses and guitars. In Salamanca, it means ibérico ham and cheese from the Mercado Central and charro jewellery, the province's silver filigree.

The two cities cost about the same, and both are easy on the wallet for Western Europe. Salamanca's students keep bar prices low, and a drink often comes with a free tapa, but the admission charges at the cathedrals and university add up. In Jerez, the bodega tours and tabanco sherry are cheap, but rooms get scarce and dearer during the Feria, the flamenco festival and the motorcycle race weekends.

This is one of Jerez's strongest suits. Flamenco is still a living local art here. You can hear it in the members' peñas of Santiago and San Miguel and in informal sessions in the tabancos. The late-winter festival brings major dancers to the Teatro Villamarta.

Salamanca's stage life is thinner. It has touring shows at the Teatro Liceo, university concerts and choral music. Its most memorable sound is the caped student tunas singing under the arcades of the Plaza Mayor in the evening.

Neither city has a bathing tradition, and both are restful mainly because of their slow pace. Jerez offers an Arab-style bathhouse in the old town and shaded patios through the hot afternoons. Salamanca has quiet cloisters at San Esteban and Las Dueñas, and real spa waters within a short drive: the old balneario at Ledesma and the Roman-era springs of Baños de Montemayor.