Arcos Información is the name of the local newspaper which comes out every Thursday and costs one euro. It often makes for interesting reading, especially if, like me, you can speak Spanish but don’t know much about what’s going on locally (on the other hand, thanks to Sky News I could tell you all about the floods in England).
There were two items of news which caught my eye in the most recent edition of Arcos Información. The first was the announcement that the final stretch of motorway between Arcos and Jerez was about to be inaugurated (last Friday). And today I had the good fortune to test it out. The motorway cuts the drive time between here and Jerez airport by 10 minutes to just 20 in all. This I found out on the way back from dropping off guests, as on the way I simply couldn’t work out how to get onto the motorway, finding myself instead driving along the old road which runs parallel - and looking jealously across to my left.
The second piece of news concerns the river. 
The once mighty Guadalete meanders around Arcos much as it always has, except that with the creation of the man-made lake (1962) water flowing into it is regulated. That means it’s little more than a steady trickle in places. There’s no denying that the Guadalete has been neglected, which probably wasn’t the case in the old days when locals used to swim and wash their clothes in it - see the photograph left, which was taken in the 1940s.
But things are looking up. Work starts in September on creating/resurrecting pathways along the riverbank. I’ve always thought the Guadalete an undervalued and underused piece in the Arcos jigsaw, so this is good news for the town. As is the motorway.