El Desierto de Tabernas – the Desert of Legends – Originally Published: Cordoba, May 2022

“No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees”.  

Face to face now. Goat-meat and ripe figs upon his breath. Gentle warmth off his dark, neatly bearded face, cool light in his searching blue eyes. They search the soul. They traverse every plain of thought, penetrating every cavern of sub-conscious intent. Searching, they see the entire workings of the inner nation. His eyes illuminate the royal tent, regal in its simplicity. There are no obese manifestations of gold here, no obtuse expositions of wealth. For there is no question as to his legitimacy: he is a ruler of men, a man under god, and his eyes are always searching. He walks behind and continues, “There is nothing in the desert, and no man needs nothing.” A pause. His eyes flash. He has found something: “Or is it that you think we are something you can play with? Because we are little people; a silly people; greedy, and barbarous, and cruel.” Silence. The wooden tent posts creak in the night breeze, the heavy cloths murmur in the light of the brass oil lamps. Finally, his eyes come to rest. They shine, brighter than scimitar steel shines in the light of a full moon. But then he smiles, and the whole desert exhales. “Do you know, Lieutenant, in the Arab city of Cordoba were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village?” Cordoba. A world and a millennia away from here. Except in his heart. There, and only for him, there are roman fountains and orange blossoms. There, there is no desert, no tents, and no war.  

“Yes, you were great”. 

His eyebrows quiver and his smile settles somewhere between irony and regret: “Nine centuries ago”. 

“Time to be great again, my Lord.” 

The night is growing late, this audience coming to a close. A chill infiltrates the tent. It is cold in the desert. Prince Feisal is tired. He turns his back. “Which is why my father made this war upon the Turks. My father, Mr. Lawrence, not the English. But my father is old and I…” His shoulders sink, his eyes can search no further. “…I long for the vanished gardens of Cordoba”. 
 

I remember when I first saw this film. I was six, and my mum brought it home in a DVD box which contained a circular tin CD case for the two disks. DVD was novelty enough – we usually rented VHS from the Extra Vision on Blackrock main street – but this tin casing was doubly exciting. It must be a really good film to have a tin casing inside the DVD box. And the picture on the box itself: the setting sun blazing red across the dunes silhouetting a man, scimitar raised above his head. It sent my six-year-old imagination into overdrive. Of course, the politics and depth of the plot went way over my head, but the impression the cinematography and imagery made in my developing brain was irreversible. The sun rising over an alien world, a vast expanse of nothing. Lawrence’s young companion drowning in quicksand would reply over and over in my nightmares. And Prince Fiesal’s eyes, played by a suspiciously dark-looking Alec Guinness, enthralled me. Lawrence of Arabia – the film that ignited my fascination for the desert. It’s funny how life meets itself from time to time, how I would one day call home that mystical city that existed only in Prince Fiesal’s dreams, and how I would find myself standing in the very place where Alec Guinness and Peter O’Toole forged such immortal moments of cinema: el Desierto de Tabernas – the Tabernas desert.  

Heading south towards the Sierra Nevada 

The Tabernas is the only real desert in Europe. It is in the very south-east of the Iberian peninsula, about thirty-kilometers north of Almeria and the Mediterranean sea. From Cordoba it is a four-hour ride on the bike, though it is not advisable to do this during a heatwave. The first hour-and-a-half of riding were later to prove my undoing; the straight stretch of motorway from Cordoba to Úbeda. The air temperature was hovering around forty when we left the city at noon. There were no clouds. On days like this the asphalt temperature can reach scalding levels, not much of an issue in a car, but on a bike it’s a different story. You feel the heat of the sun above cooking your head inside the helmet, whilst your body is being baked by even hotter heat coming off the road below. Turning off the motorway for petrol I noticed the on-coming car flashing its headlights at me. It took me a few seconds before I realised I was driving on the wrong side of the road. I was getting heat-stroke. At Úbeda we pulled into a McDonalds for a coffee, ice-cream, and a coke: enough caffeine and sugar to power me to the moon if necessary. Luckily we were now riding regional roads which are less exposed to the elements than the motorway. We were also leaving the Guadalquivir valley, the hottest region in Europe, and heading towards the Sierra Nevada, the snowy mountains, and the temperature dropped the further south we rode. 

The Tabernas desert is bordered by these mountains to the west, and by two other ranges to the north and south-east. Thus, despite being only a few kilometers from the tropical coast, the region of about 280km² receives little rainfall, and when the rains do come, they are torrential and abrasive. Since there is little soil, the seasonal downpours erode winding channels through the badlands creating the iconic ramblas. Nevertheless, there is life. Hardy desert flora colour the lunar topography, and desert creatures such as birds, mice, reptiles and scorpions go about their day oblivious to the busses, campers and bikes ferrying tourists eager to marvel at this unique landscape. But there is another attraction too, one which draws cinema-lovers and holiday-makers alike, for the desert is also known by a different name: European Hollywood. 

The edge of the desert 

We reached the edge of the desert around late afternoon. An empty filling station and an abandoned road-side restaurant were the sole buildings midst the endless barren hills. After filling up, we took the road towards the town of Tabernas, passing the first of three major attractions in the area: Mini Hollywood. This, alongside Fort Bravo and Western Leone, is what made the desert famous – westerns. Specifically, Spaghetti Westerns. In its heyday of the 60’s and 70’s, Tabernas provided the iconic setting to some of cinemas milestone productions. Once Upon a Time in the West, Duck You Sucker, My Name is Nobody, and of course, Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. The sets are still here – some of them anyway – and are now old-west theme parks complete with live shows and staged duels. Thankfully, these three attractions are the extent of tourist development in the region and, due to the desert also being a national park, it retains that god-forsaken wasteland aesthetic that captivated so many of us when we first saw it on the big screen. Other films were shot here too. 1960’s Hollywood epics El Cid and Cleopatra for example. Conan the Barbarian and Indiana Jones were here in the 80’s, and recently you saw the Tabernas in Game of Thrones, Black Mirror, and even in The Crown.  

Where are we again? In Little Texas Camping 

We found a lovely campsite called Little Texas about ten kilometers north of the town. To my surprise we were met by a deeply-tanned pony-tailed gentleman who greeted us in a thick Welsh accent. He confided to us his mid-seventies age though he didn’t look a day over sixty. The secret, he told us, was not drinking, not smoking, and not chasing after women. Together with his wife, they run the Little Texas campsite which I have to say, alongside the one near Navarcles in Catalonia which I stayed in last year on my journey south from Marseille, has been the best campsite I’ve stayed in so far in Spain – peaceful and well equipped, our generous hosts told us they would have coffee and delicious fresh bread waiting for us the next morning. We showered, set up the tent, and headed back into Tabernas as the sun neared the horizon. 

Sunset over the desert 

From the hilltop, the 11th century Moorish castle casts its ruined shadow across the red and brown rooftops. Echoes of children playing and the occasional car starting up escape from between them as we climb towards the ramparts. The evening sky is purple, the ground warm. Fat black beetles rest among the pebbles. The once imposing fortress has mostly disappeared. A renovated keep and some low sections of wall, bolstered by plaster and cement, are all that remain. Up here, the wind casts itself in ripples across the long soft grass. On the other side of the valley that nestles the town between the castle and the opposing ridge, which falls away steeply as if purposefully sliced away, the long shadows exaggerate the hive of caves and tunnels cutting into the cliff-face, at the foot of which the old-town begins. The church-bells toll nine o’clock. Crickets hesitate at the sound of our footsteps as we make our way to the west wall. The sun is hanging a finger above the horizon. Shimmering in the dust and haze it looks liquid, mercurial, and boundless. We sit and look out upon the vast expanse of scorched plains and serrated hills as Ferdinand and Isabella did one January evening, 1492. Tomorrow the capitulations will be signed. Grenada is fallen. The final conquest complete. Tomorrow the world, and everything in it, will be written for eternity. The water is parted with sword and cross; by blood and gold a terrible beauty is born. But tonight there is only us, quietly sitting on the western wall; lords of the desert, if only for a moment.  

Night. The cool breeze is welcome. It sooths the skin, disperses the smoke of the campfires and dilutes the smell of the unwashed bodies and camels scattered around them. Ali is sitting at the foot of the bivuak, his back turned, staring into the flame. He says nothing; has said nothing all day. First he was angry, then agitated; now he simply seems tired, but every now and then his black moustache flexes like a cat as the point of his tongue passes along the front of his teeth. He is struggling with something immense; a paradox of faith perhaps, or the improbability of two equally unlikely and contradictory possibilities occurring simultaneously in a single instant. What does it mean? God is silent. It is cold in the desert. Under the sun you long for the moon, when the moon comes you seek the warmth of a fire. Without fire, you ache for the warmth of the morning sun. If only it were forever dusk then the body would suffer neither suffocating heat nor paralyzing cold. But that is not the way of the desert. The desert is cruel and uncaring for the needs of the body. But did not god create the desert too? It is written that in paradise are streams of cool water and perpetual gardens of plentiful shade and fruits in great abundance. And if, god-willing, you go there when you die, is that not worth twenty-thousand days under the hot desert sun? All creation is as god sees fit, even the desert. But why must some people endure the desert whilst others have green pastures and lush forests? Is that also as god sees fit, or is it simply written so? And why does this pale-skinned one chose the desert over the green gardens of his home? What is he trying to unwrite? When my water-skin is nearing empty, I have to chose: do I go back two days ride to the well where there is certainly water, or do I go on, a half-days ride to the well ahead but which I cannot be certain is not dry? Death in the desert is one dry well away, but what good is a far-away well full of water if I have no water now to get there? God is silent. Perhaps it matters not if both wells are full, or if both wells are dry. My water-skin is nearly empty, perhaps that is all that is written. 

Ali sets his tea down by the fire.  

“El Aurens, truly for some men nothing is written unless they write it.” 

Walking in the ramblas 

Oasis de Lawrence de Arabia is a ten-minute walk along one of the winding ramblas. The ground is hardened mud, carved in parallel channels by last years rains. Salt crystals glint in the mid-day sun. I am feeling terrible. The heat-stroke from the previous day landed me an almighty mid-night migraine and I am woozy with pain-killers and lack of sleep. Marina puts her floppy H&M hat on my head – I am too uncoordinated to mount a coherent opposition. And so the king of fashion shuffles onwards towards the filming location of some of Lawrence of Arabia’s iconic scenes. The desert landscape in the film is mostly Morocco and Jordan, with some extra shots snatched in California. But the infamous oasis scene was shot in the Tabernas. The train assault was filmed a few kilometers away beside Almeria, and many of the ‘Cairo’ buildings are actually in Seville.  

In 1961 this valley was alive with hundreds of people, animals, vehicles and equipment. Today it is empty, a protected natural area. Click the arrow on the adjacent image (above on a mobile) to see a ‘then and now’ comparison. Lawrence of Arabia certainly has its problems – it’s definitely of its time – but classic films are classic for a reason. It undoubtfully contributed somewhat to my love for empty desolate landscapes and adventure, though I am inclined to agree with Price Fiesal in that Cordoba is definitely a more agreeable place to live. That said, there is something about places like this, places so unnatural for human existence, and so void of distractions to both the body and the mind. It intrigues me. From Jesus to Jim Morrison, people in search of something have always looked to the desert to provide it. I don’t know what exactly, but maybe that’s the appeal.  

Riding in the ramblas 

I’ve rarely had much opportunity to ride off-road, much to my disappointment. I was exited therefore to see my chance – miles of dirt and gravel roads, sometimes turning into sand, the occasional hollow still holding water from the rains. The GS was fully loaded with luggage and girlfriend however, so I picked my routes carefully and took it slow. Still, it allowed me to revel in my cowboy fantasy, floppy H&M hat included. Spotting a dirt track leading from the road down and under the bridge to a rambla, I couldn’t resist. Sand. I shouted back to Marina not to freak out if the bike went from under us – just let it go and step away from it – you can see how much confidence I have in my off-road ability. Luckily it wasn’t deep, and the GS skipped over the ruts and grit like a baby goat delighting in finding its feet. This is what it was made for. Pity it had road tires and me riding it to hold it back. 

Climbing to the crocodile rock 

One of my favorite films is The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. I was probably eleven or twelve when I first experienced Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, and the Spaghetti Westerns were played on repeat for the rest of my childhood. They have everything: spectacle, adventure, emotion, and timeless characters. But what kept me coming back was the feeling I would get every time the screen transitioned from black to a wide-angle panning shot of a vast sepia desert and a barely-distinguishable speck of a lone horse and rider in the distance. And the silence. Only the wind. To this day, short of getting on my bike with nowhere particular in mind to go, there is no other feeling like it. Complete freedom. It’s a cliché, and one I’m unashamed to admit I’m entirely a sucker for. Especially when it sounds like Morricone.  

It will come as no surprise then that visiting the Tabernas is something of a pilgrimage. And I’m far from the only one. I found a website made by a fellow Leone nerd, which locates and provides directions to all the major locations that appear in the films. Without this site, finding them would be impossible, so a big thank you is owed. With the help of the directions, we trekked along the sandy ramblas searching for one of the most iconic backdrops in cinema, the Crocodile Rock, so named as it resembles a crocodile jutting out from the hillside. In the mouth of the crocodile (pictured here, click the arrow to see how it appears in the film) Tuco and Blondie divide up the loot from their “collecting the ‘wanted’ bounty then shooting the hangman’s rope’ scheme in Good, Bad, Ugly. We scaled the steep ridge, marveling at the effort of dragging film cameras up here nearly sixty years ago, and enjoyed a pensive rest in the mouth of the most famous rock in the west. Twelve-year-old me was overcome.  

The smoke clears. A lingering smell of sulfur permeates the dim taberna. A man lies dead on the dirt floor. Nobody moves. The gang stare down the lone black-clad stranger. He stares back, unblinking, a pistol in each hand. A rustle in the back room, an unseen door opening, the sound of footsteps beating a nervous escape: the taberna owner wisely making himself scarce. Time seems to have slipped out with him; no seconds divide one moment from the next. Above the bar bundles of dried chillies and garlic hang on lengths of twine from a roof beam. Gentle and hypnotic, they spiral around, slowing down and momentarily pausing before reverting their course and unraveling in the opposite direction. A lazy fly buzzes into the midst of the tension but nobody dares divert their eyeballs to follow its meandering path about the room. It leisurely investigates every beard, nostril, and mouth. A twitch will be answered with a bullet. Eventually it lands on the table beside the stranger and helps itself to the bowl of bread and beans. Without breaking eye contact, Indio slowly, ever so slowly, steps towards the stranger. His intelligent green eyes are clam and focused, careful to signify no ill-intent; his hands steady, his shoulders relaxed. With a nod he gestures the stranger to sit. The gang relax their wrists and the fly buzzes out the small square window. The stranger holsters his weapon. Facing across the low round table they lower themselves in unison, Indio onto a stool, the stranger into his chair. The gang, unsure, watches on. Indio chews a crumb of bread, but his eyes never leave the stranger’s. Now, they are locked in a private duel of unspoken examination, a dance of eyes, searching every minute pupil-focus for some hint of intent – who will break first. It is Indio. 

“Who are you?” 

The stranger’s eyes glint. They are light hazel beneath the brim of his black hat, sly and worldly and full of life. His neat moustache is grey like his carefully trimmed hair. He smiles, picking up his spoon and channeling it through the mush of warm beans before him. The last holds of tension release their grip on the room, but his eyes are still tied to Indio’s. 

“I’m the one who can open the safe for you”. 

At that, the tension returns. Indio’s eyes break, darting around the room and across the faces of his gang. His jaw tightens. “What safe, Señor?” 

The stranger’s smile widens, revealing his gleaming white teeth. His eyes are shining now. He is a cat, and the mouse realises it is being teased. 

“The one from El Paso, you got there ahead of me”, he grins, “however – “ “However?” Indio is angry, agitated, but he knows he cannot move. Wrists are tightening around the room, bodies slowly turning towards the table. The stranger pretends not to notice; he takes another spoon of beans and continues. “Open that safe and you’re going to destroy half the bank notes. I can open it without blowing it up”. Indio’s gaze falls upon the bowl of beans. He chews, though the bread has long since dissolved between his teeth. He is caught. He reaches for a new crumb of bread. “What’ll it cost?” “Five thousand”. A pause. Another spoon of beans. At the bar a man wearing a green poncho turns his back and draws on his cigarillo, smoke swimming around his blond hair. “Two’s all I’ll pay you”. The stranger looks up from his beans and grins. A triumphant grin. The room is a twitching of fingers. Unconcerned, the stranger stares into Indio’s furious eyes, and with a single shake of his head, dares the mouse to run. “Five.” 

Lee Van Cleef is somewhat overshadowed by Clint Eastwood’s meteoric rise to fame. He’d been around the block by the time Eastwood came along, a career playing petty villains and minor characters in low budget westerns. Aging and with his career, if you can call it that, in decline, Leone gave Van Cleef his break in For a Few Dollars More and subsequently in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The Italian visionary saw potential iconic cinema where others saw only cheap and budget, and he cast Van Cleef as the antithesis to Eastwood’s ‘Man with no name’. And this he embodied perfectly, creating in my opinion the most developed and fascinating character in the trilogy. The scenes he shares with Eastwood are to me the most compelling and memorable, their acting equally individualistic yet wonderfully complimentary. It was moving therefore to find the remains of the taberna from For a Few Dollars More, and play out the scene in my imagination as I remember first seeing it fifteen years ago. It is little more than a few crumbling walls now. Some ancient timber beams stick out of the mound of rubble from whenever the roof eventually caved in, and vegetation is rapidly consuming what’s left. It wont be long before the ruin is knocked I’m sure, returning the land to the desert. But what was created here in 1965 will surely endure, as great works of art do. And even when the exact location is lost and forgotten, so long as cinema is preserved and enjoyed by people, this little patch of the desert will always be the place where the Man with no name quietly chewed his cigarillo as Colonel Mortimer confronted his sister’s killer, the ruthless Indio and his gang, and risked it all for a few dollars more. 

Goodbye to the desert 

It’s hot in the desert, but bizarrely not as hot as Cordoba. Drained and exhausted, my desert adventures had to be put on hold – I needed sleep and a break from the sun. Though the temperature crept back towards forty as we left the desert, the day was fortunately overcast meaning the road wasn’t magma-hot as it had been the day before. I will return in the future to ride the ramblas some more, I’ll keep the bike light next time. We decided not to visit any of the movie-set theme parks, it would’ve cost nearly €50 for the two of us, though they did seem like a bit of fun. The one we pulled into however, Mini Hollywood, incurred my displeasure by playing slightly altered Morricone scores over the PA, probably to avoid licensing or royalty fees. So we consoled ourselves by deciding that the scraggly sidewhiskered-man working the Repsol garage was a more authentic Spaghetti Western experience than any theme park, and he made a damn good coffee too. Tank filled and coffee had, we said goodbye to the Tabernas desert until next time and headed west towards Granada, and from there north and home to the not-so-vanished gardens of Cordoba.