Garrucha packs out its cultural centre for a night reviving Almería’s western legacy

Garrucha lost its only cinema, Cine Tenis, two years ago, yet its Centro Cultural was full again this weekend for a night built entirely around film. Locals turned out for a homegrown actor, a director premiering Almería’s newest western, and a guest list that stretched all the way to Hollywood.  

A feature debut shot on Almería’s own western set

On Saturday August 22, Garrucha’s Culture Department filled the town’s Cultural Centre for Noche de Cortometrajes del Oeste, a night dedicated to the western films of local director Manuel Olaya. The main event was Olaya’s feature debut, Infortunio, a western about a Wells Fargo stagecoach robbery exploring greed and misfortune, shot at the Oasys MiniHollywood film set in nearby Tabernas. It screened alongside two of his earlier short films.

Olaya’s previous short, Arizona 1878, had already picked up close to 40 festival selections and around 20 awards. Council officials compared his visual style to that of Sergio Leone, the Italian director whose 1960s Spaghetti Westerns first turned Tabernas into a working film set.

Garrucha’s own screen actor took centre stage

Among the guests of honour was Pedro López, a Garrucha-born actor who appears in Olaya’s film and is known to Spanish television audiences from Isabel, Toy Boy and El secreto de Puente Viejo. Presenter Pablo Martínez led an on-stage interview with Olaya, while councillor Luis José Fernández Cortés, head of the Concejalía de Cultura, thanked everyone involved and said the night proved “that culture, cinema and our land still have plenty to tell”.

A guest list that stretched from Tabernas to Hollywood

The council’s tribute list ran to more than a dozen names. It included members of the Lakota American West Association and its president, Armin Lautz, alongside Almería-based crews such as Andalucía Producciones, Veracines and Diego Pérez’s Almería Plató de Cine y Teatro. A pair of re-enactors dressed for the occasion, and one composer scored all three productions shown that night. 

Among them were Peter Beale, 83, and his wife Francesca Beale, a British couple who have lived on the Almería coast for more than 60 years. Long before settling nearby in Carboneras, Beale worked as an assistant director on Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, then ran 20th Century Fox’s UK arm between 1973 and 1978, where he green-lit Star Wars, Alien and The Omen, and later oversaw The Empire Strikes Back.

A reminder that Almería’s film history has not gone anywhere

For a town that lost its own cinema in 2024, a full house for a locally made western is a marker of intent as much as nostalgia. Olaya’s production companies, JAG Dreams and IMGrafía, are based between Garrucha and neighbouring Níjar.

Oasys MiniHollywood, the set built outside Tabernas in the 1960s, remains a working film location as well as a tourist attraction, proof, the council’s write-up argued, that the area continues to be a privileged setting for the genre that first put Almería on the map. Olaya’s team has not yet announced a wider release date or festival run for Infortunio.