Wednesday 7th May

We headed south from Cazorla towards Granada and camped for the night to the east of the city in the shadow of the snow capped Sierra Nevada.

Thursday 8th May

The landscape for the final leg south changed abruptly once south of the Sierra’s into a ‘Breaking Bad’ kind of desert scrub.  Officially Europe doesn’t have any deserts but this sure looks like one. It was also a convincing location for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, remember the Good the Bad and the Ugly genre.  Over 100 films were made here.

Cowboy country

There are not many plant species keen to put down roots in this environment that is unless they have water and are covered in plastic in a Christo-esque sculpture sort of way. Here just outside Almeria we have 450 square kilometers of the stuff, (plastic that is) from the foot of the mountains to the sea.  A veritable poly tunnel paradise, with one thing in mind that is to feed the hungry customers (you and me) of Europes supermarkets with cheap winter grown tomatoes and the like. From a distance it does look like the snow capped Sierra’s but up close this is the ugly sister.

Poly tunnel paradise

If you thought ‘12 Years a Slave’ was bad news, this  21st century human misery story behind the plastic also makes shameful reading.  The European supermarket chains dictate the low profit margins to the farmers who then struggle to stay in business. One way of doing this is by employing migrant invernaderos who mostly come without rights from Morocco and the sub Sahara. They come here seeking a better life but find themselves trapped into sweltering their days away in 50 degree heat and living in insanitary conditions just to pay back the cost of getting here in the first place. and this is all happening in civilised western Europe, affectionately known as the Almeria economic miracle.

Try Googling El Ejido, and get the picture from space.