Explore Almeria, Spain: from the Tabernas Desert to secluded beaches
The desert landscape of Spain’s arid south is a cinematographer’s dream. Hire a car and you can visit locations from some of best films ever made.
Riding the train from Madrid to Almeria, a remote southern province that has become the “latest thing” for travel aficionados in Spain, I gaze through the window at the haunted Tabernas Desert. Much of rural Spain is arid, but this landscape is on a more extreme level of desolation. It’s the closest thing Europe has to a “pure” desert; a parched expanse carved with bluffs and gorges as if by a giant knife. Littered at random are signs of failed habitation: ghost towns, abandoned farms, ruined train platforms. When my train stops, no passengers get on or off. If not for the remains of a Roman aqueduct bleached by the sun, I may be in the backblocks of Utah or Wyoming.
Film locations
I’m hardly the first to notice the resemblance. In the 1960s, this eerily beautiful region doubled for the American West in director Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, including the Clint Eastwood classics The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and A Fistful of Dollars. Today, there is a cottage industry devoted to Leone’s old film sets, many of which have been preserved in the dry air, including one called Texas Hollywood/Fort Bravo. The cinematic love affair has extended to the coastal regions of the province of Almeria, too. Its spectacular settings have doubled for Egypt (in Cleopatra), Jordan (Lawrence of Arabia), the Republic of Hatay (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), Tunisia (Patton) and even Australia (when, in the TV series The Crown, Prince Charles and Princess Diana have a romantic stay in an “Outback” farm).
Fascinating history
Almeria was one of the last parts of Arab Spain to be reconquered by the Christians in the 15th century, adding a fascinating cultural depth to a visit. This is obvious when I arrive in the province’s capital, also called Almeria, a quiet port surrounded by bare, sandy mountains. It’s only a short jump to North Africa, and the Islamic past feels surprisingly close. In the palm-fringed plaza, I eat plump olives on a rooftop across from the cathedral, a converted mosque that has maintained its original Islamic marble columns. From there, steps ascend into the Medina, or Walled City, dating from the 10th century, a maze of narrow laneways and white-cube houses that might have been transported intact from Casablanca. At its summit presides the Alcazaba, an Arab palace-fortress complex that was reinforced in the Nasrid Caliphate. Although second in grandeur only to the Alhambra in Grenada, it is entirely devoid of visitors, allowing me to loll in the shady gardens, lulled by the tinkling of water running through irrigation channels by my feet, and enjoying 270-degree views of the sparkling Mediterranean.
Almeria’s best beaches
But the real attraction is a road trip east along Almeria’s coast, where at every turn of the highway the spectacular lunar landscape meets the sea with an explosion of piercing light. Since the 1980s, Spanish environmentalists have fought to hold off the real estate developers who have destroyed much of Spain’s more accessible shoreline. Today, its centrepiece is the beach-scalloped, 38,000ha Cabo de Gata-Nijar Natural Park.
Over the coming week, I have the sense of entering uncharted territory, a rare feeling in European travel today. I’ve made no hotel bookings in advance, so after meandering aimlessly I decide to base myself in a fishing village I take a fancy to called Agua Amarga (Bitter Water), where I rent a room from an elderly lady and her mother I meet by chance on the street, both of them named Antonia. “The Two Antonias”, as I dub them, apologise for the room’s basic decor before showing me its terrace, which has million-dollar views over the Mediterranean. Afterwards, I luncheon at a fish restaurant on the sand, where a flush-faced young guest stands up from his table and bursts into flamenco songs, inspiring the waitress to mutter a laughing aside: “This is Spain!”
Some stretches of the park’s coast are elemental. At the exposed Playa de los Genoveses (The Genoans’ Beach), named for Italian traders who frequented it in the Renaissance, a fierce gale sends waves pounding into the sea cliffs, like an Iberian version of Australia’s Twelve Apostles. Other beaches offer calm waters and evocative secrets. One called Playa el Playazo de Rodalquilar looks windswept at first, but the Two Antonias have instructed me to hike around the eastern headland, where I discover a protected cove with gentle waters, crowned with a ruined, golden-hued fortress, the Castillo San Roldan, built after the Christian reconquest.
The dramatic history of this area is reflected in its place names: From Agua Amarga, I drive past the Rambla de los Feos (Promenade of the Ugly Ones), Venta del Pobre (The Poor Man’s Hostel) and along Camino del Cementerio (Cemetery Road) to Playa de los Muertos (The Beach of the Dead). Perversely, the most dismal appellations indicate the most seductive locations, as if Almerenses use a reverse PR to stop outsiders from finding their hideaways. After hiking for 10 minutes down a cliff, the bleakly named Beach of the Dead turns out to be a ravishing arc of egg-shaped pebbles caressed by ankle-high waves. A pillar of stone at the beach’s south hides another secret cove with the air of an ancient sanctuary; I half-expect Jason and his Argonauts to arrive in a trireme.
Every day reveals why this stark landscape has been so beloved by cinematographers. Driving south towards the eponymous Cabo de Gata, the park’s southernmost promontory, I pass Las Salinas Almadraba, an 18th-century church scoured bone-white by relentless sea gales. Its spire seems to rise directly from the salt flats – salt is a major Almerense export – and the surf crashes almost at its doorstep. At the cape itself, an 1863 lighthouse looms above the La Arrecife de las Sirenas (Sirens’ Reef), where jagged rocks gnash like fangs in the waves. The waters are home to Spain’s last colony of monk seals, providing an evocative link to an ancient legend. Homer is unlikely to have visited, but stories were brought back to him by Greek sailors who imagined the seals to be mermaid-like creatures who sang enchanted songs and lured ships to ruin.
In the know
There are 10 trains daily from Madrid to the city of Almeria (which gives its name to the province), two of them non-stop (from €35/$58), where you can rent a car. All major agencies also have offices in the city. From there, it’s less than an hour’s drive to the Cabo de Gata-Nijar Natural Park.
Tony Perrottet travelled at his own expense.
If you love to travel, sign up to our free weekly Travel + Luxury newsletterhere.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout