The Alpujarras is a small but particularly pretty region of Andalucia. Located south of Granada it is made up of a broad valley that runs east-west at the base of the Sierra Nevada. Most people enter the Alpujarras at Lanjaron a spa town with the remains of a Moorish castle. Herbs, honey and ham fill the shops and friendly shopkeepers proudly thrust morsels of ham your way to try and then of course buy. It is so delicious it is difficult to make it back to your hotel room with your wax paper packet of thinly sliced jamon un-opened.
Early in the year the town seems relatively quiet and there are a limited number of tourists sharing the crisp air. If in the evenings you do find yourself in need of some company you can locate the town's small bars by listening carefully as you wander along empty streets. Eventually they are revealed by their light and noise tumbling onto the pavement.
Further up the valley small rustic white houses draped in Bougainvillaea and potted plants nestle amongst old olive groves carpeted with poppies, a far cry from the intensive olive production in evidence in other parts of the region. Here Moorish irrigation systems still support a productive horticulture of a range of crops and small plots are scattered with beans, onions, and oranges. There is wealth of knowledge about how to grow things here that has accumulated over centuries and been kept alive in these small communities. In recent years these towns and villages have begun to change as the young and ambitious head to the coast to one of Spain's newest gold rush towns: Almeria.
On your first approach to Almeria you are greeted by a huge sheet of light. So vast is the shining reflection of the sun that you can be forgiven for thinking it is the sea. Until you realise that what really lies before you is an unending expanse of plastic greenhouses. Have you ever wondered how our supermarkets defy seasonality? How we can happily munch on salad in the winter? Well here in all its glory lies the answer.
The growth of highly intensive horticulture under plastic or plasticulture in this region is phenomenal. Driven by a demand for salad crops from northern European supermarkets it continues to grow. The result is a landscape covered in strange geometric shapes designed to use every square inch of space. Each plastic parcel is packed with every salad and Mediterranean vegetable you can think of, but success comes at a price, in this case it's the cost of water. The scorching heat of Almeria may be conducive to growing tomatoes but the region's distinct lack of water is not. As the remaining water slowly becomes more saline the thirsty gaze of the plasticulture industry has settled on the snow melt rivers of the Alpujarras. A huge pipe is planned to remove water from these hills in the north, a transfusion that will slowly suck the life from the Alpujarras while the coast continues to thrive on its new found wealth.
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