Golf developments

Beach Developments

Inland Developments

In the far Southeastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula is this sun-baked province, with the highest hours of sunshine and lowest rainfall in Europe. Given Almería´s climate it is no surprise that much of the province is comprised of semi-arid, desert-like landscape.
Almería´s skies are also the clearest in Europe, meaning that Europe’s most powerful telescope has been installed here, near Gergal. With an annual average of 3,000 hours of sunshine, it is also home to Europe’s largest solar energy plant, the Solar Platform of Almeria (PSA), an EU solar energy research centre. Even if you are not allowed in, you can peer over the wire fence and marvel at the rows of futuristic heliostats reflecting the sun’s rays into the towering solar oven and many other devices for turning the sun’s energy into electricity.
The area could have remained somewhat unknown had it not been for the film companies who discovered that the area offered ideal film sets for films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Patton.
Hundreds of westerns have been produced in the local hillsides. In the 1960s Italian movie directors like Sergio Leone filmed their own version of the North American Wild West among the mesetas and cactus trees of the Desierto de Tabernas Natural Area and the ramshackle film sets have been turned into a tourist attraction, Mini Hollywood, complete with trading posts and double-door saloons. The nearby village of Tabernas makes a good base for exploring the desert and has a charming church built in the Mudejar style.
The village of Níjar is famous for its numerous pottery workshops as well as its production of jarapas, which are rugs and bedcovers made from rags. The barren, dusty hills around the village are sprinkled with picturesque villages some of which also have a tradition of producing ceramics, such as Sorbas, Ulelia del Campo, Lubrín, Bédar and Vera, as well as the town of Albox, north of Ulelia del Campo.
Coastal villages
Mojácar is the largest resort on the Costa Almeria, popular with foreign residents, many of them British; around half of its population of 5,000 come from the EU. Mojácar is divided between a stunning hilltop old part of the town, Mojácar Pueblo, and the newer seafront Mojácar Playa, built alongside a superb sandy beach. A more low-key resort is San José, the centre of the extraordinary Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, with some of Andalucia´s most magnificent beaches such as the Playa de los Genoveses and the Playa de Monsul.
North of Mojácar is the small resort of Villaricos with a pebble beach. Roquetas de Mar is a popular resort 25km west of Almeria with a broad, sandy beach and many watersport activities and golf courses.
All in all, Almeria offers a diverse landscape with some excellent beaches, beautiful countryside and a wealth of history. The province is surrounded by the provinces of Granada, Murcia and Malaga.