History
Almería, the Alcazaba and the desert the westerns used
Above the port of Almería stands a fortress begun by a caliph of Córdoba more than a thousand years ago. Inland lies a bare, cracked country of gullies and dry riverbeds that stood in for the American West in Sergio Leone's films.
By Walter Pellow2 November 20264 min read
Almería has two faces, and both of them are dry. One is a fortress of honey-coloured walls running along a ridge above the harbour, the work of the Moors who ruled this coast for centuries. The other is a landscape inland that looks so much like Arizona that a generation of film-makers came here to pretend it was. Between them they explain a great deal about this corner of Andalusia: its long Islamic past, and its light.
The Alcazaba
An alcazaba is a walled citadel, and Almería's is one of the great ones. It was begun in 955, under Abd al-Rahman III, the first caliph of Córdoba, and it went on growing for five centuries afterwards. It is often described as the largest Moorish fortress complex in Spain after the Alhambra in Granada, and when you see it from the harbour, a line of walls and towers stretching along the hilltop, the claim is easy to believe.
Inside, it is not one building but three enclosures, climbing as the ridge climbs. The lowest once held houses and baths and is now laid out as gardens, with terraces and pools of water in the Moorish manner. Above it lay the palace of the rulers, of which little more than foundations survives. At the top stands a castle of a different kind, built on the orders of the Catholic Monarchs after they took Almería in 1489. The walk up through them is a walk through the city's history in the order it happened.
The views are the reward. From the upper walls you look down over the flat roofs of the old town, the harbour where your ship is tied up, and the bay sweeping away eastwards. On the other side lies the bare country inland, brown and folded, with very little green in it.
From the harbour, a line of walls and towers stretches along the hilltop.
The desert the westerns used
That bare country is the Tabernas desert, and it is the reason a good many people have heard of Almería at all.
In the 1960s the Italian director Sergio Leone, looking for somewhere to make westerns that looked like the American West and cost a good deal less, found what he wanted here. The Tabernas landscape is a country of windswept plains, dry riverbeds and rocky ravines, and on film it passes for the American West remarkably well. All the films Leone shot in Almería were made in Tabernas, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was filmed partly here. Other directors followed, and westerns have been made here ever since.
The westerns were not the only ones. Scenes for Lawrence of Arabia were filmed in Almería province too, with the Tabernas desert and the coast standing in for Arabia.
When the film crews left, some of the sets stayed. Oasys Mini Hollywood, the best known, is now a theme park built around a western town. It is the kind of thing you will either enjoy hugely or not at all, and it is worth knowing which before you go.
The desert itself is the real thing, though, and it is worth seeing whether or not you care about westerns. It is often called the only true desert in Europe, which is a phrase you will hear many times in Almería, and whatever the strict definition, it looks the part: bald hills cut into gullies, cracked riverbeds, scrub, and a sky with nothing in it.
Cruises that call at Almería
Almería is a port of call for cruises from Britain to the Spanish and Portuguese coasts, and all three here list it. None of the itineraries mentions Tabernas, which lies inland; the city, the harbour and the Alcazaba are what a day in port is likely to be about.
Ambassador Cruise Line's thirteen-night Soul Train at Sea sails from London Tilbury in May. Its places include Vigo and Santiago de Compostela, Cádiz, Almería, Gibraltar, Portimão, Lisbon and Honfleur.
Ambassador's fourteen-night Christmas & New Year Sailing to Spain & Portugal sails from London Tilbury in December, with Leixões, Lisbon, Almería, Málaga, Gibraltar, Cádiz and Vigo among its places.
Ambassador's fourteen-night Jewels of Andalusia and Morocco sails from London Tilbury in February, with Vigo, Cádiz, Málaga, Cartagena, Almería, Tangier and Leixões among its places.
With a day in Almería, I would start at the Alcazaba early, before the sun is high, and come down afterwards to the old town for a long lunch in the shade. The westerns will still be there another time.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
