Jerez , for generations of non-Spanish people , is where the sherry comes from . For a more specialised interest group Jerez is where those beautiful dancing horses come from . For people - like us , let ’ s face it - with more interest in iron horses than natural ones , Jerez is where much of modern day Spanish racing comes from . The local attractions of Jerez and the surrounding region are endless and typically Andalusian , beyond those already mentioned . The beaches of the coast are very close . The town is 200,000 people strong , with an historic core full of boutique hotels and tapas bars , and a more recent outer ring of development that features the modern world and all it offers - with a southern Spanish flavour of course . Stand inside the gates of the circuit itself and Cadiz is not far over there , Seville is just up there a bit … And yet you can grasp the very core of what it is to be in Andalucia by just staying in the town of Jerez itself . Jerez is Andalucia to the n-th degree . The racetrack on the south eastern fringes of the town , on the road to the mountain village of Arcos de La Frontera , has been an ever-present backdrop to the rise-and-rise of Spain as a global racing power , at least since the bigger GP classes took over from the smaller ones as the national motorcycle racing obsession . With more Spanish participation in the biggest GP class of that time , 500cc , the Iberian focus in general moved up the capacity classes , and widened into production-derived race series of all kinds . Central to this growth was one of the pillars of Spanish bike racing , what we now call the Circuito de Jerez - Angel Nieto .