Spaghetti Western
Propositioned in the Badlands of Tabernas
My new book ‘North to Norway’ is now out in paperback and e-book. It's a story as much about the joy of travel as about motorcycling. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before! If you’re still wondering what all the fuss is about I thought a few excerpts over the next few weeks might give you a flavour of my writing and the adventures I recount in the book. I hope that you’ll want to buy the full version, available now on Amazon and in selected branches of Waterstones.
In last week’s extract Far from The Madding Crowds I’d headed for the lesser-known hills of Andalucía and the Pueblos Blancos, nursing my battered ribs. My journey east continues.
A fabulous new section of the A348 guided me east from Cádiar, a gentle descent from the Alpujarras into the moonscape of the desierto—the bad lands dotted with sparse desert plants and wind-sculpted mounds of sandy rock. This harsh terrain nonetheless supports one of the region's biggest industries: agriculture. The Costa del Polythene, as some call it, is Europe's market garden. Your salad greens likely grew under those acres of bright plastic, mammoth greenhouses that I flashed past on both sides of the carriageway. Lorries laden with leafy cargo zoomed incessantly towards Madrid, Munich, Milan and Manchester.
This arid and uncompromising region made a good living long before agribusiness came around. Those scrubby, Arizonian landscapes? Ideal for Spaghetti Westerns in the '60s and '70s. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was filmed here, which is why I'd found myself on a mini-Hollywood film set decades ago, back when I worked in marketing for Shredded Wheat. Our advertising agency dreamed up TV commercials based on Henry D. Perky, the pillow-shaped breakfast cereal's US inventor, which had first brought me to Spain in the early '80s. We filmed a Wild West-themed advertisement (three Shredded Wheats helped the postman outrun the bows and arrows of the Native Americans… I know, different times). I wanted to revisit the place where we’d shot the film so Almería's Tabernas desert, unique in Europe, was my next destination. An afternoon’s blast from my past awaited.
With dust swirling with every turn of my tyres, I pulled up at the taquilla (ticket-office). A bored-looking woman took my cash and slid my ticket into a rusty tin. The wooden palisades of the fortressed town film-set emerged over a rise. It was late in the day, but I figured a few other gringos might be around. Turns out, I had the whole place to myself. The set looked familiar, but it had been forty years and I couldn't be sure I had the right Wild West town. They probably all blurred together anyway: saloon bar, stables, hotel, the gallows... the faded, semi-decrepit look fit the movie bill. Was that a careful recreation of the Wild West, or the strain of tough times and brutal sun?
Hanging my hot jacket on the noose, its arms dangling limply, I swaggered into the Saloon like a lone gunslinger. The only sign of life? A man and a woman on the other side of the bar. My boots squeaked on the dusty floorboards as I pulled up short. Still as statues at first, but then a flicker of movement. She had a smock, a creased forehead, and slightly greasy, lank, brown hair. Not your typical saloon siren.
Apparently, my ticket entitled me to a ‘free’ beer. There was an Estrella Damm beer fount on the bar, which slightly ruined the Western illusion. Bike rules, so I ordered instead a gaseosa, that burp-inducing, slightly insipid lemonade beloved of the Spanish. She dug into a fridge hidden out of sight and poured it into a slightly grubby, chipped glass and slid it across the bar to me. A red pen mark on my entrance ticket said I’d now had the freebie.
The man had been leaning against the corner of the kitchen and roused himself to slouch the few feet to where she had been serving me. She moved over as he approached, casting him a glum sideways glance. His clothes told a tale, unkempt, ragged and dust-filled, with the odd ambiguous stain. He would have passed for a character in a spaghetti western, but it was not an act or a costume. This was who he was. He thumped the bar with his fist. She poured some beer into a glass and set it down in front of him. I mentioned my visit forty years back. His words cut her off the moment she tried to speak.
As he slurred, I realised my hanging jacket was not the only legless thing in town. The beer tap's steady hiss, the day's draining heat, those maddening western tunes… it was a potent mix. A sour waft of stale beer hit me, making me step back.
‘Pshht. Forty yearsh, yeah. Us. No, no… fourteen years. Was good then. Now nobody cares for westernsh. Less people come now. You’re only the shecond today.’
His desperation tinged the air, and pity filled me for both of them. Their lives played out in a dusty echo of a bygone era, itself more myth than reality. The market was changing, leaving them stranded. Those bustling sets I hazily recalled were gone, replaced by an emptiness echoing across time. The Wild West’s thirty-year reign was shorter even than the gap since my last visit. How long would the memories of gunslingers linger here?
I was struggling to follow his drunken tumble of words. A swift exit was needed, like many a cowboy before.
‘Adios,’ I said.
‘Adiosh.’
She followed me outside. Out of his sight, her hand touched my arm, a plea.
'Él no es un mal hombre, solo está un poco perdido.’
Apparently he was not a bad man, just a little lost. I nodded, feeling her sadness, a flicker of a wistful smile crossing her worn face.
‘You got room on that bike?’ she asked, her laugh half-hearted, half-desperate to get away from her lost husband.
A few kilometres down the road, the 19th century was abruptly replaced by the swinging '60s. Route 66 Tabernas, a roadside bar, was a riot of winged Cadillacs and Buicks, some parked on the roof, others amidst old gasoline pumps and nostalgic Americana. It looked like some entrepreneur had raided Kentucky scrapyards and shipped the whole lot to Spain. Outside a couple of girls were smoking and chatting animatedly, probably singers for the live music promised on the advertisements. I suspected that if I poked my head inside the joint a bottle of poor-quality but expensive cava and a scantily-clad dancer or two might rapidly have appeared by my side. I decided to snap a photo (my Honda magically transported to Route 66) before making a tyre-squealing exit.
© 2025 Stephen Oliver
If you’ve enjoyed this excerpt you can find the complete story in paperback and Kindle format on Amazon.