Clint Eastwood, number 1 fan of Tabernas.
It is the only desert in Europe. a place of bad lands (badlands), arid, brown, ocher, dry, extremely dry (does not reach 240mm of annual rainfall), roasted by the more than three thousand hours of sunshine a year. Data, adjectives that have made and make the Tabernas Desert in Almería as surprising as it is attractive. And not only for walkers, adventurers, but, above all, for the cinema.
Its orography, its light It has been passed off as the American Far West, the Near East, the Middle East... For Clint Eastwood it was almost a second home during the 1960s. He and Sergio Leone with the spaghetti western They transformed that wasteland into a dream location to which tourists from all over the world still arrive today looking for their film heroes.
For all that, the European Film Academy (EFA) has added the Tabernas Desert to its list of Treasures of European film culture with which they want to "make known to the public places of a symbolic nature for European cinema, places of historical value that need to be conserved and protected not only now but for future generations.”
Fort Bravo, capital of the Far West in Tabernas.
The EFA has chosen Tabernas for the more than 300 movies that have been shot there from the 50s to today (That's not counting video clips, ads...). Being the 1950s and 1960s, the golden age of this Almerian desert, when Leone rolled there The dollar trilogy (For a Fistful of Dollars, Death Had a Price and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) between 1964 and 1966. And even before these lands were passed off as the East in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or Egypt in Cleopatra (1963).
Spielberg also made the dry land pass through the desert of Petra in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And Bud Spencer and Terence Hill shot their western saga over there.
In 2002, Álex de la Iglesia honored the place and the western in 800 bullets. David Trueba spent his Almeria road trip there Living is easy with closed eyes . And among the most recent productions that have returned to Almería, exodus, by Ridley Scott; The Sister brothers, Jacques Audiard with Joaquin Phoenix; or the series BlackMirror Y Game of Thrones.
Old decorations can still be seen in Tabernas.
“This iconic location has no equal on the continent and its contribution to the world of cinema has been enormous”, said the president of the EFA, Mike Downey, who also recalled European productions nominated or awarded by the Academy, such as Morvern Callar, by Lynne Ramsay; Brothers, by Susanne Bier or SexyBeast, by Jonathan Glazer.
Within the Tabernas Desert there are still three western towns, sets of old movies, today a tourist place, Fort Bravo, Oasys Y Western Leone.
MORE MOVIE TREASURES
The Tabernas Desert is treasure number 12 of the European Film Academy, a list in which Spain has two other locations, important for their contribution to cinema and for their historical and natural value: the Collegiate Church of Sant Vicenç in Cardona, where Orson Welles shot bells at midnight in 1964; and the Plaza of Spain in Seville, scene of starwars or Lawrence of Arabia.
Among the other treasures around the world there are museums and centers dedicated to great European filmmakers, such as the bergmancenter in Sweden, the Eisenstein Center in Moscow, the Lumiere Institute in Lyon, the Parajanov museum in Yerevan or the Tonino Guerra museum in Italy; and also places such as the natural reserve of Hovs Hallar, where Bergman shot The Seventh Seal; and places like The stairs of The Battleship Potemkin in Odessa or Ferris wheel in Prater Park in Vienna, where Harry Lime (Orson Welles) confessed in The Third Man.
Taverns, Almeria's Hollywood.