Paella Westerns

Welcome to hard times, in the former Spanish movie center of Almeria;

In the tiny village of Tabernas, the only real settlement for dozens of kilometres, elderly residents trade tales of their glory days in the golden age of westerns.

"This was considered the Spanish Hollywood," said Jesus Laguna, a former stuntman who still wears a cowboy hat. "All types of actors came through here from the real Hollywood - American Oscar winners, they were all here. But not anymore."

....Recently a Spanish photographer, Alvaro Deprit, spent a month living in this desert, documenting the lives of those left behind when the film industry up and left.

"It's a melancholy feeling," Deprit said. "Because their world has finished. It was the golden age of western films, and now it's an imitation of what it once was."

Then there's the sincerest form of flattery;

There's also a local actor, Jose Novo, who looks nearly identical to the late Henry Fonda. Novo says his mother was friendly with the American actor, and gave birth exactly 9 months after Fonda was last here in 1968, shooting a film.
It was aptly titled "Once Upon a Time in the West."