Tabernas Desert

Where it sits. The Tabernas Desert fills a sedimentary basin about thirty kilometres inland from Almería city, boxed in by the Sierra de los Filabres to the north, the Sierra Alhamilla to the south and, far to the west, the bulk of the Sierra Nevada. Those ranges strip the moisture from Atlantic and Mediterranean weather before it arrives, leaving a rain shadow that receives little more than 200 millimetres of rain a year — the only part of continental Europe with a genuine desert climate. The protected area covers roughly 280 square kilometres of grey-gold badlands: marl and sandstone hills eroded into fins, gullies and flat-topped mesas, cut by dry watercourses called ramblas that carry water only during the torrential storms that shaped them.

The story behind it. Millions of years ago this basin lay under the Mediterranean, and the marine sediments laid down then are exactly what erodes so spectacularly now. Because the ground cannot hold what little rain falls, each downpour carves the slopes further, producing the badland relief that geologists study here and that film crews found so useful. The landscape is not lifeless: esparto grass, dwarf fan palm, tamarisk and rare salt-tolerant plants hold the slopes, and the ramblas support Bonelli's eagles, trumpeter finches and the odd desert-edge species found nowhere else in Europe. Since the 1970s the basin has also hosted the Plataforma Solar de Almería, the largest concentrating-solar research facility in Europe, whose heliostat fields and towers appear across the plain like a science-fiction set of their own. The desert was given protected status as a paraje natural in 1989.

On screen. More than three hundred films have been shot in and around this desert since the late 1950s, and its landscape has stood in for Arizona, Sonora, the Sahara and Arabia. David Lean brought Lawrence of Arabia to Almería in 1962; Sergio Leone made the westerns that named a genre here, filming A Fistful of Dollars in 1964, For a Few Dollars More in 1965 and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 1966; Conan the Barbarian and Steven Spielberg's tank chase for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade followed. The desert never stopped working: 800 Bullets affectionately buried the western industry here in 2002, Doctor Who filmed A Town Called Mercy on the same sand in 2012, the third season of Penny Dreadful used it in 2015, and the exteriors of Black Mirror's Black Museum were shot here in 2017. In October 2015, the sixth season of Game of Thrones filmed the Dothraki Sea in these ramblas, with the horde riding a captive Daenerys Targaryen across country that had already carried John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Peter O'Toole.

What you actually see today. Three western towns survive of the fourteen or so that once stood here. Fort Bravo, also called Texas Hollywood, keeps a main street, a Mexican pueblo, an Indian camp and a working stable, and still rents itself out to productions; Oasys MiniHollywood, off the N-340a, pairs its saloon set with a small zoo and pool complex; Western Leone, built for Leone's later work, is the quietest and most atmospheric. Away from the sets, the desert itself is the attraction: the Rambla de Tabernas and its side gullies can be walked from the roadside, and the marked route into the Rambla del Búho takes you into fluted badlands within twenty minutes of leaving the car. The town of Tabernas below its ruined castle has bars, fuel and a film-history collection, and in Almería city the Casa del Cine occupies the villa where David Lean and Peter O'Toole lodged during the Lawrence of Arabia shoot. The industry left more than sets: for two decades local farmhands worked as Mexican bandits and cavalry, Almerían horsemen doubled for cowboys, and several of the extras interviewed in documentaries about the period are still living in the villages along the N-340a.

Getting there and timing. The A-92 crosses the desert from Almería in about half an hour, and the N-340a threads its heart past the film sets; buses serve Tabernas town but not the sets or trailheads, so a car is close to essential. Winter and early spring are the sensible seasons, when the light is low and long and daytime temperatures sit in the teens; summer walking is genuinely hazardous, with no shade, no water and ground temperatures far above air temperature. Never walk a rambla when storms are forecast anywhere upstream — the flash floods that sculpted these gullies arrive fast. Sets charge admission and run stunt shows on a timetable that thins out in winter, so check before driving out.