AtrasAdelante

Tabernas
and Cinema





The dry arid landscape and the desert climate were the primary factors leading to this area of Almeria becoming the centre of production of Western films, bringing with it the resurgen of Western towns. El Sabor de la Venganza and Antes llega la Muerte were the earliest productions, later followed by other larger ones such as Cleopatra and King of Kings, which used the desert as the backdrop for the scene in which the devil tries to tempt Jesus.





A few scenes from the classic Lawrence of Arabia also took advantage of the landscape Tabernas, but without a doubt, it was director Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns" that put the area in the limelight. Of this genre, filmed during the decade of the sixties, those that stand out the most are A Fistful of Dollars, Leone's first western, For a Few Dollars more, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and probably his most ambitous project, Once upon a time in the West, with Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale and Charles Bronson. During the late seventies and early eighties, director Stanley Kubrick used this area for the lunar landscape observed by the astronauts from the spaceship Discovery in his film 2001, A Space Odyssey. Also, one of the most famous American generals played on the big screen, Patton, took the leading role in the famous Battle of Guettar, also filmed in this area. Another legendary