Farewell to Plácido Martínez, the man who always believed in the potential of Almeria for cinema

The tourism businessman, co-founder of the company Malcamino's, dies at 66 years of age

[Plácido Martínez with filmmaker Terry Gilliam in 2014 in the Tabernas Desert.]

Almeria has lost one of the people who most believed in the potential of this province for cinema. A man who defended that the Tabernas Desert and the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park could be much more than a magnet to receive filming: he fought for the natural force of these enclaves to attract tourism and generate employment.

Plácido Martínez Salmerón, co-founder with Cristina Serena of the tourism and film company Malcamino's, died last Tuesday at the age of 66 after a life dedicated to disseminating the Almeria landscape among filmmakers, tourists, fans and workers in the industry.

Born in the Almeria neighborhood of Pescadería in 1959, the son of a family of stonemasons, as the journalist Manuel León recalled in a profile published in LA VOZ in 2007, Plácido Martínez came into contact with the seventh art in the 80s, getting close to specialists and helping in the construction of sets in productions such as 'Conan, the barbarian', 'East of the West' and 'Warriors of the Sun'.

The lack of continuity of filming at that time led him to go with a group of Almerienses to Ibiza and Benidorm to work on medieval tournaments. He also worked as a waiter and painter until he returned to his homeland when the businessman José María Rossell, with the Hoteles Playa group, recovered the old town of El Fraile, built for the filming of 'Death Had a Price', to transform it into the MiniHollywood Oasys theme park.

There he painted and labelled sets, worked as a specialist (he was one of the promoters of the Western show that is still performed there) and became manager of the town for twelve years.

Malcamino's dream

In 2003, together with Cristina Serena, he founded Malcamino's, based in Tabernas, a company dedicated to film tourism, the location and management of filming permits and horseback riding and 4x4 routes through the desert.

He also chaired Cinegenia, the Provincial Association of Production, Creative and Auxiliary Companies of the Cinematographic and Audiovisual Industry of ASEMPAL created in 2006.

In its beginnings, Malcamino's managed the municipal tourist information office of Tabernas and soon began to offer the first film and nature routes. Already at that time, before the explosion of film tourism in Almeria thanks to the success of titles such as 'Exodus: Gods and Kings' and 'Game of Thrones', Plácido Martínez and Cristina Serena offered interpretive tours of the filming locations of films such as 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' and 'Conan the Barbarian'.

Throughout these two decades, they have also functioned as a location service for film, television, music videos and advertising shoots: in 2014, for example, they accompanied director Terry Gilliam on a tour of the province on the occasion of his visit to receive the Almeria, Land of Cinema award at the Almeria in Short Film festival. background of FICAL.

Likewise, Malcamino's (more than a company, a vital project) has participated in the development of tourist-cinematographic guides, in the creation of thematic routes in Níjar and in the recovery of Los Albaricoques as a cinematographic enclave.

[Presentation of the ASFAAN award of the Almería Western Film Festival to Plácido Martínez and Cristina Serena for their work in the company Malcamino's.]

For his career, LA VOZ presented Malcamino's with the Filabres-Alhamilla award in the film category in 2018. A recognition that was also given to him by the Almería Western Film Festival in 2022 with the award of the Association of Audiovisual Festivals of Andalusia (ASFAAN).

"I understood that there were millions of people who loved cinema and a good part of those shootings were done here, in Tabernas: it was a duty and an obligation to highlight that. We couldn't let something so important pass us by, we got our act together, two dreamers, and we launched ourselves to develop our project that has been evolving over these two decades," said Plácido Martínez after collecting the AWFF award.