A Day at Mini Hollywood

 Mi madre en Oasys MiniHollywood en 1983. Pepe Cantó

Oasys MiniHollywood, currently owned by the Playa Senator hotel chain, was built in 1965 to record Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More. Since then, it has operated as a film studio and, from the 1980s, also as a theme park. Now it is a Western city where foreigners are welcome: we are offered the experience of walking through the same desert that Clint Eastwood kicked, seeing specialists handing out slaps as in good westerns, a cancan show... And even a safari and an aquatic area. It is easy to know who we outsiders are, you just have to look at our faces. Instead of having a sun-tanned face, we have it full of white furrows, a mixture of sweat and sunscreen. I'm also armed with a selfie stick. The millennial outlaw has arrived.

It's 11:00 in the morning, Oasys MiniHollywood has been open for just an hour and the parking lot is almost full. While I'm queuing to buy my ticket (€34.60 with free buffet included), three buses from hotels in the area unloading passengers. They are the anti-western: they wear a towel, swimsuit and flip-flops. In 1997, Oasys MiniHollywood premiered a safari and an aquatic area that have given the park an aura of implausibility. Like seeing someone with a watch in a Roman movie. I thought there could be nothing more ridiculous than walking through a Western town in a bathing suit until I went to the pool with a cowboy hat and a plastic gun in my pocket.

I bought the pistol as a joke in the souvenir shop (3,50 €, the cheapest), but the hat (8,50 €) was out of necessity. The dozens of tourists who are now wearing swimsuits, towels, flip-flops and cowboy hats must have thought the same. It is noon, which means that the sun is at its worst and that, shortly, the spectacle of the West will begin in the town square. I ask the manager of the gift shop where she recommends me to watch it from. "From anywhere, but in the shadows." I listen to him and cram under a balcony with a group of Britons.

The show concentrates in fifteen minutes everything that can be asked of a western: shootings, escapes from prison, galloping horses dragging fugitives, falls from buildings... A delight for fans of the genre and fans of making boomerangs on Instagram:

I am calmer when, at the end, its protagonists tell me that it is not always the same one who receives the slaps – "we rotate and we have several shows," they say. I also ask them how they cope with the heat. I am short-sleeved and on the verge of fainting, and they wear long fur coats, leather pants and scarves around their necks. "In the end you get used to it," they say. I don't think I could even carry those suits, but since everything is to try, I go to the photo studio. For 10 euros, outsiders can dress up from head to toe as characters from the West and take some photos in sepia. After dressing inside the tent, the photographer takes me out into the sun, and I feel infinite respect for the workers of the park. What a bad minute. Luckily, the photographer knows the poses by heart. "Shotgun on the shoulder, knee up, draw," he orders. Hopefully someone like that in the party photos: "Beer down, cigar out, eyes open."

To get over the suffocation I head to the Saloon, so authentic that I have to restrain myself from throwing a stool in the air and starting a bar fight. On stage, Ezequiel and Molly Dedos de Azúcar – I have serious suspicions that they are not their real names – perform some of Ennio Morricone's songs for the Dollar Trilogy. In the Wild West there are minijobs: Molly has also received me at the entrance of the park; she was checking that the audience did not approach the horses in the Western show and now she plays the guitar. A while later, I found Ezequiel unsaddling horses.

The changing city of the desert Although I don't remember much, it's not the first time I've been in MiniHollywood. My parents went to this town in the West in 1983. They liked it and in 1999, when I was 11 years old, they took me to feel the heat of the West. I have photos of the two trips, but I can't find either of the locations. So, I ask for help from the musician of the Saloon, Ezequiel. "It doesn't sound like anything, but if anyone can help you, it's the sheriff." His name is Manolo, he is one of the stars of the Western show and one of the most well-known and beloved faces of the park. The kids greet him and ask for photos. Between flashes, he takes a look at the ones I show him.

Manolo tells me that he started working at the park in '93, so it is difficult for him to locate some of the images of my parents' first trip. "All those houses [in the photos] don't exist anymore, although I think they were behind the Saloon, which is one of the oldest buildings," he explains. It does help me to locate the rest of the photographs that my parents took in '99, already in my company. And now I repeat them. This is how the park has changed in the last 20 years.

Oasys MiniHollywood is the third installment of España Park, Verne's summer route through little-known but very fun theme parks. Every week, you can find a new park at this link. If you want to know more about professions and places in this and other parks, you can visit España Park's Instagram.

 

By Pablo Cantó Tabernas 14 August 2019