Few places in Spain offer such complete harmony of landscape, desolation and beauty, reflecting the full splendour of aesthetic desert mirages. The virtual absence of vegetation in a substratum scorched by the persistent rays of the sun, where giant, aggressive formations are carved, helps to create this remarkable landscape in western Andalusia.

Tabernas was indeed considered the European far west for years - the Mecca of the Spaghetti Western, with its natural stages beckoning to filmmakers. The remains of that glorious age can still be seenin the twon of the old west which have been resurrected for the benefit of tourists - a true desert film set in the middle of the Almerian province.
It was the Romans who named this place (Thabernax, Thabernae) for the great number of inns and taverns which were stablished to provide supplies to troops, offer aid to carriages and a resting area for horses. The Tabernas Desert is an arid strip of nearly 2000 km2 surrounded by the Sierra Filabres and Sierra Alhamilla mountains and the foothills of the Alpujarra mountains in Almería. This Natural Area is located in the municipalities of Tabernas, Gador, Santa Cruz, Alboloduy and Gergal and is considered the only true desert area in the entire European continent.

It offers an enormous and rich variety of natural resources, geological in particular. There are a large number of unusual endemic species of flora and vegetation which are exclusively to be found here and in other areas of the North African Mediterranean slopes where identical climatic conditions are present.
This landscape shelters a natural living museum, unique in Europe for the possibilities it offers to study the process of erosion over the last 8 million years and the resulting formations.
Its geostrategic location shelters in from humid Mediterranean currents, providing minimum rainfall, high average temperatures year round, and the greatest numbers of hours of sunlight possible. What little rain does fall tends to be torrential, leading to greater erosion and forming the characteristic panorama known as "malpaís" (the badlands).

Due to its great similarity to North American deserts, the Tabernas Desert was used between the 50s and the 80s ti shoot numerous Spaghetti Western films, Hispano-Italian co-productions which brought us such legendary titles as A Fisrtsful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.
Italian director Sergio Leone and actor-director Clint Eastwood transformed Almeria into the European old west.
But Tabernas has been the stage for more than just legendary duels under the sun. Films such as Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, Conan or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade have also benefited from this surprising film stage.