Neither Italy nor Almería, the years in
which Madrid became the Hollywood of the West Despite the fact that Almería
survives in the collective imagination and not Madrid, the capital was until recently
the forgotten cradle of the ‘spaghetti western’. From 1962 to 1978 more than two hundred films were recorded.
El
Confidencial
By
Paula Soler
5/22/2022
One hundred and
sixty-five pesetas. Married and on the way to her forties, that figure that was
piling up project after project made Victorina Rosado become an advanced woman
for her time. Her long, straight hair and Filipino-French features of hers
secured her a place in every Western movie casting for years. She was the
perfect Indian. Although she also played a singer, a Mexican and even a cook in
the co-productions with Italy. “She used to go out so much that they had to
make me up to look like someone else, even in the same movie,” she recalls,
almost 96 years old at her house in Hoyo de Manzanares. Not many know it, but
in this Madrid municipality of less than 9,000 inhabitants a genre was born.
The 'Golden City' was built there, the first permanent set in the Far West in
Spain, which was the setting for more than seventy films during the decades of
developmentalist Francoism. Among them, 'For a Fistful of Dollars', the
beginning of the Dollar Trilogy, the real turning point for the European
'western' genre. Eulogio, Hoyo's neighbor, still remembers when he saw one of
the scenes of Sergio Leone's film being shot when he was barely fifteen years
old. At the time, he says, Clint Eastwood was fairly unknown, but he and other
kids his age who joined the productions as extras — in exchange for some
savings for the summer holidays and many hours of filming — were stunned by the
guns and the chases. by horse.
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[Victorina Rosado during one of the 'western' shoots
(Courtesy photo)]
At that time, the inhabitants of Hoyo
worked mainly in the fields. The arrival of foreign
filmmakers and technicians in the municipality meant, as in others, a great
boost to its economic activity. They demanded
costumes, lights, sets, food, transportation and supporting actors; and they paid better than in the field. Eulogio
was just a teenager who earned a few pesetas for the summer, but for women like
Victorina those shoots allowed her, years later, to open his own business (and
learn some Italian). "We understood each other
as best we could, they spoke their language and I didn't even speak
potato," says Rosado, who pointed to the plates with his hands and
articulated words that he had heard before: "mela?, banana?". The answer was always yes. With food one
always ends up understanding each other.
Those were the beginnings of the
'eurowestern', better known as 'spaghetti western', which emerged as the
cheapest option to replicate from Europe the Hollywood classics about the Civil
War (1861-65), the clashes on the border with Mexico , or the Indian Wars
between white settlers and indigenous peoples. What its producers —mostly
Italian and Spanish— did not imagine then is that they were creating a variant
that would change everything. That premiere in 1964 of a young Sergio Leone
marked a new way of making movies. The films were no longer a series B of those
made by the United States. With this trilogy was born a style, a language, a
star (Clint Eastwood), a director paradigm and the conception of the original
soundtrack as the key to move the viewer. Leone, Eastwood and Morricone
"plus the iconography that is generated around the cigar, cruel
characters, violence, space-time, overalls... They generate a before and
after," explains Víctor Matellano, director, critic and author of 'Clint,
shoot!' From 1962 to 1978, more than two hundred films were shot in the community,
compared to 156 in Almería
In addition to the Dollar Trilogy, other works
such as 'Gringo', 'Three Good Men', or 'The Terrible Sheriff' were also shot;
and although the popular association to the genre is Almería and not Madrid,
the capital was until recently the forgotten cradle of the spaghetti western.
From 1962 to 1978, more than two hundred films were recorded in the community,
compared to the 156 that Almería received. But the myth had already been
generated and the Andalusian province has survived in the collective
imagination as the scene par excellence of the confrontation between gunmen and
criminals that starred actors of the stature of Henry Fonda or Charles Bronson.
And even some films recorded in Ciempozuelos were said to have been shot in
Almería, explains Matellano. Back then, this was the preferred area for
industrial location and it offered a singularity: the desert landscapes that
are still preserved in the Mini Hollywood sets, which undoubtedly helped its
survival over the years. But filming began in Almería after Madrid, and
besides, not everything could be done there. Neither did they have the
infrastructure of the capital, where studios like the one in Las Matas were
located, nor were the costs so low as they had to move the technical team to
the south of Spain.
Beneath the myth, another reality is hidden.
Feature films had already been shot in the capital in the late 1950s and early
1960s because Madrid was familiar to Americans thanks to figures like Samuel
Bronston. The producer of Russian origin was responsible for great successes
such as "El Cid" or "55 days in Beijing", which at its
premiere brought together a young Don Juan Carlos I, the then "senior
minister" Carrero Blanco, or even the Duchess of Alba, as can still be seen
in the archives of the Spanish Film Library. And although in general Spain
offered great attractions for foreigners to want to come to film in the
country, such as the great talent of its human capital, the real reason for the
boom in those years was frozen capital. “The peseta could not leave Spain. The
Americans had invested in many companies in the country and could not make it
profitable, convert it into dollars”, says the film director. So they thought
about how they could get something valuable through customs, and they came up
with a way. El Cid (1961), starring Sophia Loren and Charlton Heston, was worth
eleven million dollars and only took up eight cans of film.
These were
not the only factors that played in favor of Almería to become the queen of the
'spaghetti western', but also the fact that the volume of partial or total
production made in Madrid was not revealed until several decades later. , or that the community vindicated
its history just a few years ago. “In Madrid a lot of cinema was made, but very
little has remained” Madrid's big mistake, however, was not keeping its sets.
"A lot of cinema was made, but very little has
remained," laments Javier Ramos, historian and author of 'The Western
Cinema in the Community of Madrid'. The best example
is Hoyo de Manzanares itself. The 'Golden City' began
as nothing more than a street with empty facades. As
more Italians and Americans arrived, interiors were built, a saloon, several
horse troughs, a fort, and later, another stage was even opened, recreating
Chicago's own 1970s film noir.
[What can be seen today of the old sets of Hoyo de
Manzanares today (P.S.)]
Now, in that same place there are no more than
those watering holes, so the association 'Hoyo Cine' and the City Council
decided to value its history and recreate it so that it would not fall into
oblivion. In 2019 they reproduced the set of 'For a Fistful of Dollars' with
augmented reality. Rebuilding it was not an option because the area is protected
within the Cuenca Alta del Manzanares Regional Park. "We created an
application, 'Vive Hoyo', with which you can scan some images that show the
sets as they were in real size on the current landscape," explains Clara
Alcalá, Tourism technician at the Consistory. Like Hoyo, La Pedriza, Colmenar
Viejo and even Casa de Campo were the settings for Western movies. The genre is
already residual in Spain, although from time to time directors like Wes
Anderson come to shoot in places like Chinchón, or Almodóvar plans to shoot
another one in Almería. But it was not always like this. "Since before the
cinema existed, novels of this genre were very successful in Spain," says
the historian from Madrid. “Once they started making movies, they liked them right
away, and even Buffalo Bill brought his show to Barcelona for a week”. That was
proof of the success of the genre at a time when these 'movies' were not only
shown in large cinemas, but also in small neighborhood ones. Today Madrid
preserves above all its natural landscapes, which have hardly changed since
those days of intense filming on the outskirts of the city. Although there are
also routes, exhibitions or festivals for those who want to immerse themselves
in that old love for battles between Indians and cowboys through sketches,
photographs, old carriages or costumes. The community has at its disposal a
guide with four routes and 36 municipalities through which to visit all the
locations where the 'Far West' films were shot, from Cercedilla or Aranjuez, to
Aldea del Fresno or El Escorial. Although some are upset that more films were
shot in the capital than in Almería, it cannot be denied that during that
golden age of the western genre in Europe, Madrid became its Hollywood of the
West. *Interviews conducted by María Román and Paula Soler.
