From Mojácar To Nerja Via The Wild West

With about three hours of the Mediterranean Highway ahead of us we take a detour away from the straight road, out through the sleepy towns of Sorbas and Tabernas and on into the rocky barren country inland. This is the closest thing in western Europe to a genuine desert, but this is spectacular and rugged mountain desert rather than the flat sands of the Sahara, for instance. It’s big country.

As we mentioned in our last post, this is where the movie “A Fistful Of Dollars” was mostly filmed, together with a whole host of other so-called spaghetti Westerns, which just leads you to wonder why we don’t know them as paella Westerns. However, we are about to discover that the links between the Almeria province and the movie industry are much stronger than we could have known.

The small town of Tabernas has a kind of Mexican look about it – as we wander past the lines of low rise houses nestled beneath the rocky outcrops and past the occasional stout prairie cactus, we are reminded of those terrific towns of Mexico visited on our tour last year. Overlooking the town is a Moorish castle – the “castillo arabesque” according to the signs, high on a hilltop and calling us up to take a closer look. The town is for the most part quiet, then now and again there is the sound of community: little pockets of activity in small enclaves.

Beneath the shade of the trees in the church square, groups of old guys are absorbed in games of dominoes, brows furrowed in concentration and competitive spirit: this is clearly serious stuff. They don’t look up as we pass by. Occasionally one player will grunt, otherwise the only sound is the clackety-clack tapping of dominoes on tables. The owner of the “Circulo de Amigos” cafe hovers in the shadows, knowing these intense players will demand immediate service when the next caffeine fix is needed. Two more solitary guys sit and read their newspapers in the shadows, each of them alone and in silence. There’s not one female in the square.

Small queues of people trail from the doors of the baker and the pharmacy: the sound of chatter leads us around a blind corner to a thronging cafe where a group of ladies, most likely the wives of the domino fraternity, are part way through their daily intake of cafe con leche, pastries and girl talk. There’s not one male in the cafe. It’s hard to shake the feeling that every single day in Tabernas starts in exactly the same way: the two plazas filling their respective roles.

An old guy, deeply suntanned and seriously weather beaten, shuffles past alongside his faithful labrador, newspaper tucked under one arm and a loaf of bread in the other, looking like a man with a lifetime of hard graft behind him. He’s wearing a Motorhead T-shirt.

His T-shirt, bizarre as it looks, is still not as incongruous as the town’s “other” characteristic. Here amongst the time honoured Spanish village traditions and customs, in this hot and sleepy desert town, is a large slice of film industry history. Instead of statues along the pavement, there’s a series of fixed, metallic replicas of movie directors’ chairs, the names of famous directors cut into the back. Notice boards dotted around town detail movies made here from the 1950s to the present day. Photographs tell stories of visitors: Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot……

Tabernas is movie and TV history gold, yet it’s somehow hard to pair the sleepy traditional town with its pizzazz-rich claim to fame. It basks in its silver screen glory and star-struck memorabilia while its streets are empty and its old folk play dominoes and queue at the bakers. It’s the very definition of offbeat.

From a vantage point next to the “castillo arabesque”, we can clearly see mounted lettering down in the valley below – plainly in the style of THAT lettering in LA, it reads….TEXAS HOLLYWOOD. Driving across the valley to the sign, the whole movie thing goes to an entirely different level. 

We find ourselves wandering into Fort Bravo, and suddenly we’ve left Spain and entered a Wild West world of cowboys and Indians. This is the actual “town” built for the filming of those spaghetti Westerns and subsequently used in countless movies, TV shows and music videos. If you really want to know the strength of the connection, go to Wikipedia and search “movies made in Almeria”. It’s a gigantic list.

When not in use as a film set, which is still by the way a regular occurrence, Fort Bravo is open for those on a road trip, like us, to call in and explore. You can, if you wish, stay here overnight. Fall asleep under the stars, roll up a cheroot, and keep one ear and one eye open just in case…

Amusingly, the good folk of Tabernas pocket some cash from the movie moguls. Whenever Hollywood moves in, there is a need for “extras”, and in pour the townsfolk to earn 100 euros a day for being a face in the crowd. One or two have even given up the day job, earning enough from occasional minor roles in major movies to pay the bills. Strange world, isn’t it.

It’s hilarious to wander around Fort Bravo, through the dust, past the general store and the stables and through the swinging doors into the saloon bar, all the time half expecting a gun totin’ horse ridin’ outlaw to thunder in and shoot up the town. So familiar is the Wild West layout that not only do we feel like we’ve seen it on the screen a dozen times, but we also get the uncanny feeling that we’ve been here before – especially having been to California and Arizona last year. 

Deep inside myself, what I really want to do is burst through those saloon bar doors and shout, “bartender, get me a beer!”, or maybe even, “I’ve come for my boy…” but I fear that the humour may be lost on the young Spanish girl in her saloon girl outfit behind the bar. Predictably and maybe boringly we ride the stagecoach instead.

Spanish, American and Mexican flags flutter in the wind, dust and sand blow through town. We hope our rental car still has four wheels…them Cherokees are after me…

Leaving the slightly surreal world of Fort Bravo behind, it’s back on to the Mediterranean Highway towards our next destination, the coastal town of Nerja. For a long stretch where the Highway passes the city of Almeria, the space in between the gorgeous blue Med and the lofty, rugged mountains is filled with multiple square miles of land made excessively ugly by plastic greenhouses. Along this stretch there is something like 26,000 hectares of land hidden beneath plastic coverings, in which tomatoes and other salad foods grow. We know it all tastes fantastic but boy is the cultivation area an eyesore.

And so after another couple of Highway hours we pull in to Nerja and settle into our next “home”, another apartment with sea views which are so unrealistically good that we catch ourselves just staring at the Med. Again. It’s just so blue. We need less than thirty minutes wandering through town to know for sure that this is heavy “Brit country”, there are an awful lot of British and Irish holidaymakers and expats here in Nerja, reflected in recognisable shifts from previous towns: now there are Indian restaurants, English shopkeepers, stacks of Cadburys chocolate in the supermarkets. You can get bacon, egg and beans for breakfast, you can watch Sky Sports in a bar, waiters expect us to speak English.

But don’t get us wrong: Nerja is no Benidorm, nor is it Torremolinos or Los Cristianos: no, it’s very clear very soon that Nerja is a calm, gentle place with a welcoming, relaxed vibe. Sure it’s a tourist town, sure it’s in season, and yes it’s geared to the holiday market …but there’s something welcoming about it….

We shall see what it brings…