Location filming: Andalusia
Andalusia is a genuine paradise for location filming thanks to its richly varied scenes and landscape, as well as its exceptional climate. The region offers a very wide range of opportunities in terms of landscape, from high mountains, forests, tropical enclaves, deserts, beaches and cliffs, to whitewashed towns, historical monuments and modern cities. It is for this reason that Andalusia has for many years been used to shoot westerns, films set in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, China, Russia and England, as well as sciencefiction films and period dramas.
Landscape and natural parks.
More than 17% of the land in Andalusia merits environmental protection with the result that there is a wide network of natural parks and reserves.
The most outstanding parks are Doñana, which with its marshes and broad horizons is considered to be one of the best in Europe, and Sierra Nevada, which with peaks at an altitude of almost 3,500 metres boasts the country's highest massif. Other parks and reserves also offer a wide variety of landscapes, from mountain ranges with forests and spectacular slopes -such as Cazorla, Segura, the Villas range (Jaén), the Subbéticas (Córdoba), Sierra Norte (Seville), Aracena (Huelva), Grazalema (Cádiz) and the Nieves range (Málaga)- to inland lakes -such as the salt-water lake of Fuente de Piedra (Málaga)-, and unique enclaves such as the Tabernas desert (Almería), the only one of its kind in Europe. There are also marshlands and coastal cliffs, such as those at Cabo de Gata-Níjar (Almería), the Bay of Cádiz and the estuaries of the Guadalquivir (Cádiz and Seville) and the Odiel (Huelva).
The farmland is also very varied, with meadows and pastures for cattle, fields planted with crops, olive groves, vineyards, orchards and tropical plains.
Cities, towns and villages.
In the provincial capitals and large towns historical monuments co-exist alongside modern environments. The cities, towns and villages are striking for a number of reasons: for their dramatic location, such as Ronda perched above a100-metre gorge; for their picturesque appearance; and for their diversity, ranging from historical monuments, such as Úbeda and Baeza, to other places boasting a more romantic, exotic or colonial air.
Monuments, castles and palaces.
The opportunities for location filming in unique buildings are limitless, thanks to the abundance and rich variety of the region’s architectural and monumental heritage. For Islamic architecture, Andalusia is unrivalled with buildings such as the Alhambra in Granada, the Mosque in Córdoba and the Alcázar in Seville. Similarly, Renaissance and Baroque monuments (palaces, convents and churches) are extremely abundant, whilst Andalusia is also a land of castles, with urban fortresses – such as the alcazaba citadels of Almería and Málaga, the Alcázar in Córdoba, etc. – and dozens of bastions scattered around the different towns and landscape of the entire region.
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