Once upon a time in Almería: the spaghetti western town that became a theme park

In the 2002 tragicomic faux western 800 Bullets, Basque filmmaker Alex de la Iglesia homes in on the life and fragmented family of an ageing stuntman in Almería who ekes out a living by recreating scenes from the mythical western films in which he once participated. For once upon a time, with the production of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood, this hottest and poorest of areas (a “hell-hole full of sand and snakes” in the exaggerated words of Miami Herald journalist Rex Reed) was briefly a hotbed of blockbuster movie production. 

After the 1970s, however, only the occasional production has returned to Almería – including the video for Depeche Mode’s ‘Personal Jesus’, Jim Jarmusch’s 2009 film The Limits of Control, and Pedro Almodóvar’s short English-language western Strange Way of Life (2023). These days, more locals are kept in jobs by movie tourism than filmmaking.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Mini-Hollywood, a theme park in the Tabernas desert that was developed in 1974 around the sets first constructed for Leone by Carlo Simi back in 1963. The Franco regime (1939 to 1975) ingratiated itself with foreign film productions, such as Leone’s, as these provided much needed investment and helped to rebrand a fascist dictatorship as a Catholic bulwark against communism. Production costs were a fraction of what they were in the US or even in Mexico, and the army often lent a hand if extras were required. 

With political turmoil in Jordan, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) had decamped to Andalusia. During the Spanish civil war, Almería had been a bastion of Republican resistance, and suffered aerial bombing from Franco and his Axis allies. The region was left to languish in poverty in the so-called ‘years of hunger’ of the 1940s and 1950s, with some locals migrating to Morocco in search of a better life. Multiple crowd scenes in Lawrence of Arabia incorporate a somewhat indiscriminate combination of Moroccan and Spanish extras.

Several westerns had been shot around Madrid prior to the Dollars trilogy, but the landscape and light of Almería were even better suited to recreating the American Wild West.

Sets built for Leone’s films were referred to as Yucca City. Extras were a curious mixture of locals and outsiders. Dum Dum Pacheco, infamous leader of the Ojos Negros (Black Eyes) – one of several real-life Spanish gangs first established in imitation of the street gangs in West Side Story (1961) – was recruited in Madrid. 

As part of her project to recuperate marginalised stories of Gypsy participation in cinema in Spain, Tamara Moya from the Carlos III University plans to interview the many extras paid to come to Tabernas to stand in as Indians. Gypsy activist and poet Noelia Cortés, whose grandparents were used by Leone, spoke to me this summer about how male extras were paid per day they let their facial hair grow. 

Eastwood’s nickname among the Gypsy extras was “el payo del cigarro” (whitey with the cigar). Looking back on the films that turned him into a global icon, Eastwood has remarked on how relaxed the Franco regime was about them shooting in Spain as long as they kept clear of local politics. The only cut requested for the ultra-violent For a Few Dollars More (with over five and half million tickets sold, the 1965 film held the record as the most popular film at the Spanish box-office for decades) was of a young woman lying in bed.

After Leone and Eastwood left town, Spanish producer Alfredo Fraile bought up the sets. They were used for several more films, but the glory days had well and truly come to an end by 1974. The site was bought up by a Catalan-born hotelier, José María Rossell. 

Half a century later, Mini-Hollywood is still owned by a chain of local hotels and remains open for business. The taxi driver from Tabernas who picked me up (it is easier to find a horse in the Andalusian desert than a local bus) told me how his son had tried his luck unsuccessfully as a bullfighter and is now retraining as a police officer because he wants an escape plan. If he doesn’t leave town, his only option is for his mother to get him a job in the Mini-Hollywood bar saloon where she has worked her way up to become manager. 

I needed a strong gin and tonic to survive a 15-minute cancan show I’d seen in the saloon earlier that day. I wasn’t alone. Sitting at the bar, male participants in the outdoors western show stayed in role by knocking back beers: in 2024, their alcohol consumption is more of a health and safety concern than gunpowder. Tacky old-fashioned theatrics aside, walking around the set is a treat, offering a unique view of the Wild West alongside a singular period in Spanish history.

Art of Action plays in cinemas across the UK and online on BFI Player from October to December 2024.