The road to Almería down the mediterranean coast offers delightful insights into the volumes of concrete that have been erected here over the past four decades. We set out on a bright Sunday in late August, doing the AP7 turnpike. Twenty-three year ago I had done the first half of the journey by train, so I had some comparing evidence to add to the experience.
Catalunya’s coastline is well-filled with flats and houses, if you’re okay there’s not much else left than an endless string of unappealing seaside towns and quieter stretches with some rocky parts on either side. It’s bad but not too bad, I tried to think. More troublesome of course are the petrochemical downtown at Tarragona and the new clear power plants further south, the latter possibly accompanied by a subterranean radioactive waste depot in the near future.
Pais Valenciano takes a quiet start, though the old stop-over Oropesa del Mar had expanded in many directions. From Castellón to Valencia orange trees rule the landscape. We went into town for lunch and a smoke under a tree that time and afterwards took the next slow train into the flat lowland stretch known as la Huerta, where many of the country’s vegetables are grown. Here the scenery changes dramatically. I recognised Xaraco, then the end of our trip because we ran out of dope and since there was none to be had on the sandy strip along the surf we decided to back up to Plaça Reial and check out Blanes with a fresh load in our luggage, but much of what had been the new frontier in high rise solutions now stood smallish between the younger generations. Villages on either side had grown towards one another, as good as connecting and turning the coast all to cape Dénia into an oddly thin line of uprising whitewashed walls, much like a fence. Beyond the curve everything was new.
Benidorm is the absolute screamer. It sports a lovely grey tower Madrid would be proud of against the hill on its northern shore and there’s a fair collection of hundred plus risers casting looming shadows over the once tiny fishing community, all seen from the motorway at 130 per hour of course. The car’s radio at this point offered choice between two English and three Dutch spoken stations, catering to the expat communities of more or less continuous holiday makers.
Beyond mediterranean Manhattan’s city limits the madness doesn’t stop. It’s a long stretch of interconnected pretty high in sundry lowland dotted with palm trees and intermittent rocky formations - a stunning beauty of a coastline in fact - all down to Cartagena and the new road to surpass Múrcia. This is the land where being a local politician has proven a very profitable business.
Once in the South it’s all different. Between old style parishes there was a lot of greenhousing going on, fruits and vegetables under plastic covering, it didn’t look particularly nice after a while, but it was a lot better from what we had passed all day. The girl at the gas station got our pre-paid pump number wrong and then she got it wrong again and when we could finally fill up it turned out I had ordered too much gasoline and because I couldn’t stand any more delay (when you’re doing 800 kilometers on the highway refuelling feels like a drive-through penalty) I felt pressed to leave the last bit behind. Our destination was a cortijo near Los Albaricoques, a village I wasn’t aware of.
Once off the motorway and the pale light of afternoon hazing towards sunset, the road up there was full of giant metal structures with plastic covers, blown a rusty yellow from the sahara carrying winds. People with short names offered cleaning and replacement in large black lettering. El Plastico, as our host referred to it. Her pleasant, solar powered house is on the safe side of town, facing the so far untouched Níjar nature reserve.
There are more renovated farmhouses here, not all on the tourist trail I felt. A good number of inhabitants arrived some forty years ago when Los Albaricoques had been discovered by the cinema – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly most famously was shot here - and refugees from Germany and surrounding countries settled down here, not many English. The plastic, we later heard, was mostly run by Dutchmen and the labour done by Mediterraneans and Africans, not particularly welcome according to some blind wall graffiti.
The hippies and the plastic had come pretty much parallel, the first having to find their peace in the shadows of ugly capital progress. I couldn’t help but thinking of Ruigoord, a tiny artists’ village outside Amsterdam hosting the annual midsummer Landjuweel and lots of inspired activities all year round, once at a safe distance from the ailing harbour but last time I checked encapsulated by senseless development. It’s the same sad story everywhere and it makes you wonder whether it‘s all done on purpose. But they will persevere, the hippies, if only because there’s nowhere else to go anymore. Living away from the world has become living outside its towering walls.
We had a good time though. The beaches were small and the wind and sun in September mood. Even the “super explotado” village of Las Negras had its charm, we thought. Food was best at the Italian restaurant in San José and in a windy garden in El Pozo de los Frailes, the night sky the brightest I had seen in some 16 years. I made friends with the donkeys and my wife took pictures. We felt rather comfortable when looking in the right direction.
After three days I drove us home again, same story in reverse order.
