I RODE into a rocky canyon on a horse named Estrella, our passage soundtracked by Ennio Morricone’s demoniac theme music from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Whistles, wails, trumpets, whip-cracks, gunshots – I might have heard that legendary film score in my mind even if the trail guide wasn’t playing it through her iPhone on a tinny little saddle-mounted speaker.
She, like me, was a lifelong fan of so-called “Spaghetti Westerns”, those peculiar movies that were set on the old American frontier but mostly made by Italians right around here in Spain’s Tabernas Desert. The great director Sergio Leone, maestro of the genre, projected his epic, mythic widescreen fantasies of a bygone southwestern US onto this arid southeast corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Leone’s productions built lifelike replicas of early Arizonan railroad outposts and New Mexican mining settlements near the beach resorts of the Mediterranean coast.
Some of those sets are still standing, repurposed as Wild West theme parks and clustered close together off the N-340 highway – sometimes called “the Spanish Route 66”. It’s a short, scenic drive from the port (and airport) of Almería, and a casual road-tripper could cover them all in a day. As a stranger to these parts, a film buff on a quest, I preferred to take it slower through the badlands and backdrops of movies I had known and loved since childhood.
So, horseback seemed the way to go. I stayed a night at the Malcaminos ranch just outside Tabernas, the small town that shares its name with Europe’s only desert. I watched a red moon rise over the Valley of The Owl. And I rode out next morning with stable-keeper Birgitt Keppens.
Guests can also book hikes and 4×4 tours, she told me, but popular interest in movie locations had inspired her to draw up trail maps that followed the hoofprints of squinting drifters played by Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. Growing up in Belgium, Keppens wished she were a cowgirl. “Riding in this desert feels like living that dream,” she said.
Keppens led at a trot over prairies and gullies, under crags and peaks that featured in all Leone’s masterpieces and other, lesser Westerns of the 1960s and 70s, as well as Game of Thrones and Lawrence of Arabia. Longer routes for experienced clients range much further out for two full days. At my city-slicker standard, a few hours was enough to make me saddle-sore. I am not the kind of rider that a horse respects, and Estrella kept stopping to eat wildflowers.
I circled back to the ranch and took a ten-minute taxi to Mini-Hollywood Oasys, today a Disneylike pioneer-themed attraction built around the set of For A Few Dollars More. Behind old-timey facades of saloons and sheriff’s offices I found souvenirs and buffet restaurants, museums of vintage film gear and poster art, live stage shows with costumed can-can dancers.
“It’s not so easy with the dress flying up in your face,” said Irene Rosales, a performer from nearby Benahadux, who was also trained in ballet and the native variant of flamenco. The whole Oasys operation seemed slick and professional, not especially authentic to the American past (this complex also includes a zoo and water park) but rooted deep enough in local heritage.
An industry once bloomed in this desert, employing carpenters and caterers from surrounding villages to help make classic movies, and some crappy ones too. Half a century after it all dried up, their kids and grandkids can still make a living from these sites and the audience they draw.
A few miles up the road I rented a basic wooden guest cabin in the camping area of Fort Bravo, another faux-frontier city originally designed for The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Later puchased by veteran stuntman Rafael Molina and now run by his son (also named Rafael), its a richly detailed period set still sometimes used in film or TV, and more recently in video games.
“People are sick of superhero movies,” said Rafael the younger in the onsite saloon. “But the Wild West is different. It’s a living myth but also a specific thing, this art form invented by Americans and perfected by Europeans.” Today’s visitors mainly pay to see the Molinas’ renowned stable of stuntmen execute cowboy-style fistfights and shootouts. A crowd of us gathered at sunset to watch them fall dead in the dust, then get up and joke about it.
Later, alone under starlight, I walked the deserted streets of Leone’s empty, imaginary ghost town and felt the elegiac kick I’d come looking for. Fake world, real longing – that’s cinema.
Leave a Reply