Spaghetti Western locations - post your pics

Great, that’s one I need to checkout again. ‘Gwangi’ is worth watching just for all the familiar locations, including a circus parade through Tabernas.

I just bought The Valley of Gwangi - it was familiar and worth watching.
I spotted that a location in Tabernas was the same as that used in The Hunting Party - must discover where this location is!
Thevalleyofgwangi_seethehuntingpartyalso

The Hunting Party
IMG_1717

1 Like

Easy to find, just go under the bridge near the petrol station and turn left … you’ll see a lot of palm trees where Indio’s gang shoot up the cabinet containing the safe from ‘El Paso’ … it’s also featured in ‘Play Dirty’ (1968) and dozens of westerns.

3 Likes

Known as ‘El Oasis’…I understand that the palm trees (mentioned by Aldo), were originally planted there intentionally for specific scenes in David Lean’s epic ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ (1962)…so a location with an interesting history attached. :cowboy_hat_face:

3 Likes

Thanks Aldo - I didn’t spot that this was the oasis. Must check my holiday photos again to see if I have a match.

Here is a scene from In a Colt’s Shadow with a recent shot from the same Milagros location.

6 Likes

Frenchie King / Cabezon de la Sierra
While I was visiting the SW locations in Burgos recently, I had a little extra time so I went hunting for Frenchie King train locations near Cabezon de la Sierra. This was based on some limited information that I found online about scenes in this area. The first 2 photos below are from the movie and the 3rd is my photo taken along the old track. The track is fairly overgrown so it is difficult to confirm if my photo is in the same area as the first movie shot.
I then visited the next town Rabanera del Pinar to try and access the old track from this area. Unfortunately, cars are not allowed to drive along a road/path that follows the old track so I walked about 1-2km and all I found was a tunnel along the track. I had no time to walk the complete track as this is probably 8-10km. I was hoping to find the bend in the track to match the 2nd scene below.

If anyone can add any info about the scenes from this area then please pass it on.

Here are a few familiar SW location shots taken in Dehesa de Navalvillar this week:





More to follow…

5 Likes

Great! … thanks for the update :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Awesome thread. I hope to visit Spain soon and visit some sites.

2 Likes

Yes, I think its definitely on the bucket list now. :slightly_smiling_face: :+1:

1 Like

Here are a few more photos from Get Mean locations:




6 Likes


For me the former mysterious ESPERANZA railway station in Navajo Joe was one of my priorities regarding visiting SW locations in Spain. So my wife and I visited Ontigola a few months ago on a sunny day.

Upper left image:

A view in a south-southeast direction photographed by me on March 27, 2023 from the site of the nowadays non-existant Ontigola railway station (in the province of Toledo in the region of Castile-La Mancha, Spain) which is about 5 km south of Aranjuez. There are still remains of the foundations of the station house which can also be seen as a rectangular formation seen from above on Google Maps 2D. Nowadays there are nearly no trains passing through Ontigola.

Upper right image :

A screenshot from the SW 1966 Navajo Joe with its fictional railway station ESPERANZA, a real location that was a mystery for decades to many location-hunters before a Spanish Granada resident and aficionado found and suggested the correct location in Aug 2021 (see another thread).

Bottom left image :

It shows the rock immediately northeast of the railway track at Ontigola’s former station, also photographed by me on 27 March 2023. A similar shape and structure of the (porous) rock is extremely rarely found in photographs of railway stations in Spain.

Bottom right image :

The film Navajo Joe’s rock is extremely similar to the one in Ontigola. In Navajo Joe there was also the smaller building that can be seen in the photo. Remains of a building, probably just that one, still remain on the ground, but the station building was situated on the other side of the track(s). I have also taken some photos of the remains of the station house’s rectangular stone foundation, but not shown here.

I spoke with a Spanish person who now owns a detached property just “to the left of the upper left photo” i.e. immediately to the east of the track. He seemed to claim at first that there had never been a double track there, but as was the case in Navajo Joe. However he apparently had bought the property around 2000, and the actual plot came into existence around 1980, so he didn’t seem to know the pre-history that there actually was double track but only at the station which was customary in many Spanish railway lines.
You can also see the possibility of a former double track at the station on an aerial photo from 1956, as well as the fact that directly on the spot it looks as if there could have been another track before. The old aerial photo also shows outlines of buildings which were most likely the station building and the smaller building by the rock in the movie Navajo Joe in the lower right picture.

My wife and I honored ESPERANZA with a nice very sunny 7 km run on car-free partly hilly dirt roads in the very open natural landscape where there were nearly no buildings

6 Likes

So, you really are a ‘runner’ ! :wink: Thanks for sharing the photo comparison - now, there must be some other location mystery to solve ???

I am a former Swedish marathon champion, won it some decades ago, but I am not THAT fanatic about other possible location mysteries - I also find it too much work to travel long distances in Spain (but practical “google maps location hunting” suits me better).

2 Likes

I am not sure if the location of the estate (from a short and longer distance, but maybe not the inside etc) , where the antihero Ross Logan in Requiem For A Gringo lived, has been found yet by aficionados, if it still exists. Maybe someone on this forum already knows the actual place ? I have only made some initial observations, but haven’t found the location - yet.

Below there are 4 screenshot clues that should give a good indication. My overall impression/intuition says that one should look around the Hoyo de Manzanares area in several directions and up to many kilometers away. There are for example 2 fincas marked at googlemaps but they don’t match.

  1. The first picture is from the scene that shows when Logan is on his way to the estate. In the distant background there are contours of hills/mountains of which I just theorize the higher right one could be a glimpse of the famous peak north of pueblo Colmenar Viejo.

  2. When the estate becomes visible you see a complex of buildings with certain characteristica. There is also a grand view of the distant background and I believe it is in the direction of Madrid since a googlemaps-view seems to support that. Not so very far away you can observe several buildings so that is an interesting clue. The estate is situated on a hill itself, but not on the peak.

  3. Here we have proof of that Logan really was riding to the same buildings as in picture number 2. Here there also is a hill/mountain in the back ground.
    I think it could be a part of those distant hills/mountains that you often could observe in SWs with scenes from “Golden City” which was not far south of the pueblo Hoyo de Manzanares. The relative directions of the hill/mountain and those in number 1 at least seem to fit reasonably well.

  4. Here we see the surroundings of the estate and the similarity to the terrain around Hoyo de Manzanares for me is obvious.




2 Likes

I now have hopefully a possible candidate for the Ross Logan estate location.

After having studied the different background mountains in the pictures above, also in another screenshot and the picture number 2 (with both the panorama view and the buildings) above AND very importantly Google Maps 2D, 3D and street view, it seems that the location ought to be somewhere in the hills above the town Hoyo de Manzanares.

The biggest problem with this candidate is that when you look at Googlemaps 2D I can’t be especially certain due to the fact that the original buildings seem to have vanished (IF they even were there before). But at least the candidate seems sufficiently big.
I am no expert on these things regarding the buildings, and it seems strange if those originally beautiful buildings left no clear trace.

The possible location just below a dirt road seems promising though, i.e where the Ross Logan character might have been riding to this home. It is actually called Camino de Manzanares and marked on Googlemaps 3D. Some caminos there actually have Google Streetview but not this one.

First a Googlemaps 3D panoramic view seen from the hills behind the candidate. To the right is the candidate, and distant left and middle Hoyo de Manzanares.

Second where the buildings might have been


Well, it wasn’t that one, since there is an estate less than 500 meters to the north that you CAN see certain parts of in a long distance google street view (second picture below).
I knew of it before but didn’t like the absence of a dirt road higher up in this case, but a little bit far away up there is a dirt road so possibly it was there Ross Logan was riding slowly on his way “down” to the estate which you can see on picture number 2 above…

And this estate obviously HAS real buildings that could be or most likely are the real ones I looked for with high probability. Maybe modified though in one way or another.
This estate is not quite visible at the googlemaps 3D view above where the former candidate was visible, since it is slightly more to the left.


image

1 Like

Here are a few photos from my recent trip to Granada.

The first is from Red Sun in the Sierra Nevada’s.

and the next is from Red Sun (and John the Bastard) on the old rail line near Guadix.

8 Likes

The second photo is gorgeous. Looks like it should be some sort of inspirational poster with some sort of positive and uplifting message on it. :wink:

3 Likes

Ticked that off quicker than I thought. :grin:

Also, nice pics, @IllThinkAboutIt

2 Likes

Here are a few SW location shots taken this week.


Nuevo Baztan

Villamanta Station

6 Likes