4x4, Hollywood, the Tabernas Desert and....action!
If you like film, nature and you are a curious person this is your experience! In this article we cover the entire Tabernas desert with Malcaminos, in search of the most famous film locations, which you would never believe were filmed here.
The Tabernas desert covers 12,000 hectares and is considered the only desert area in Europe, with an average of 3000 hours of sunshine per year and a maximum of 250 cubic mm of rain due to the microclimate that the mountains surrounding the area create in the desert, creating an invisible screen that protects the area from clouds.
These events, added to temperatures that don't fall below 17ºC and torrential rain that erode the terrain, contributed to the creation of a terrain type known as bad-lands , nestled among the high reliefs of Filabres, Alhamilla, Gádor and Sierra Nevada, which fill the horizon of extraordinary landscapes that are unique in Europe.
These special climatological conditions are the reason behind there being so many types of landscapes in the Tabernas dessert. Walking through the desert you can see landscapes that will make you feel that you are in many places at once, from countries like the USA or Mexico, to the intermittent water courses of the deserts of Israel, Jordan, or Morocco. All this without even leaving its 12,000 hectares.
How to explore the Tabernas desert?
Entering the Tabernas desert with a private car is prohibited, so if you want to discover it you can choose various GR and PR routes that cross from one side to another, or withthe Malcamino's company, who help us to discover the Tabernas dessert in 4x4, which we believe is the most fun way to discover the region.
Malcaminos was created to explain the landscapes that you can see throughout the dessert. A desert full of very unique formations and areas where it is important that someone explains what you are seeing while you explore the natural settings and areas which, in the 60s and 70s became a set for filming many Westerns, to the point of being named as "European Hollywood”. How about that!
Malcaminos was created to explain the landscapes that you can see throughout the dessert. A desert full of very unique formations and areas where it is important that someone explains what you are seeing while you explore the natural settings and areas which, in the 60s and 70s became a set for filming many Westerns, to the point of being named as "European Hollywood”. How about that!
Tabernas, the home of the "Spaghetti western”
The film craze was unleashed in the Tabernas desert in 1959 when director André Cayatte shot the film "Ojo por ojo” (An eye for an eye) which presented the arid landscapes of Tabernas to the rest of the world thanks to the film's success, which was when directors such as Sergio Leone, George Lucas and Spielberg began to shoot films.
I'm sure you've heard of films such as Lawrence of Arabia, Conan the Barbarian, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 800 Bullets and The good, The bad and The ugly, Australia and Exodus, right? Yep, all of them were filmed in Tabernas.
Route from Leone to Spielberg, anecdotes and landscapes
When you explore the Tabernas dessert, it really makes you think about the stunning natural diversity of Andalusia. It seems incredible than those landscapes are so near the impressive forests of Alpujarra Almeriense and the La Ragua whilst being close to the beautiful coasts of the Cabo de Gata National Park alongside crystal-clear waters.
The route that Malcaminos follows through the Taberna dessert is known as the "Route from Leone to Spielberg”. This route takes us through most of the sets of the films that we mentioned earlier, and we can re-live the scenes thanks to a portable DVD player and photographs that show shots from famous films.
The Tabernas desert is full of hundreds of anecdotes, such as the Indian wearing a watch and sunglasses who ended up in a shot, the Roman with dessert boots and lots of entertaining errors, which we will hear about as we pass through these landscapes.
Next to the bad-lands we told you about before are the ravines.
When they were very wide, these ravines were used for great cavalry rides and stagecoach attacks, and when they were narrower, they were used for persecutions and traps, and it's easy to imagine the Cowboys and Indians fighting in them between horseback shootouts.
In Tabernas, there were years when up to 25 films were shot per year, and there were cases when in certain parts of the dessert there were Roman and Western films being shot at the same time, with the subsequent array of actors who often mixed up the sets and appeared in the filming.
Facts, funny stories and loads of information about the "European Hollywood”, which you will hear along the route and which help to understand a unique landscape in Europe that is well worth the trip just to see it.
