2023-08-25 22:32:24
300 cubic meters of wood. 60 tons of cement. Half a million bricks and more than 30 kilos of dynamite. 75,000 hours of work by 100 men were necessary to build, at the beginning of the 1960s, a western town in Hoyo de Manzanares, a town 35 kilometers from Madrid that became the nerve center of western cinema in subsequent years. . A bar, ranches, cabins and several cemeteries made Golden City the first town of the style built in Spain. Although many always refer to Almería as a key site for the spaghetti westernBefore, it was this Madrid town that opened the doors of its saloon.
The ‘Spanish Hollywood’ that was born in the Republic, was fascinated by Nazism and swept away (and sank) with Franco
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National stars such as Marisol or Tony Leblanc to Sophia Loren walked through its arena. Its peak was touched a couple of years after its creation, in 1964, when Clint Eastwood stepped on the Hoyo de Manzanares sand with his cowboy boots and shot in Golden City one of the most important films in the history of the cinema, For a bunch of dollars, the imposing work of Sergio Leone that made this stage seen on screens around the world. Less than 60 years have passed, and from that corner, film history, only a few stones remain that delimit what it was. The pride of the town, the most desired decoration, is now a solar. Its abandonment from the 70s was progressive until in 2010 it came to its total disappearance.
But where did all that go? Despite its destruction and abandonment, much of what existed and what was experienced is still present… underground. That is why this year, for the first time, archaeological work has been organized to show what the sand of Hoyo de Manzanares hides. A job that comes hand in hand and thanks also to the efforts of the Hoyo Cine association directed by Julián Iglesias and who tries to ensure that all this does not fall into oblivion. There have been several initiatives that it has had for this, including an augmented reality app in which you can see what that unique set was like. Now he has had the help of Jesús Martín Alonso, archaeologist and director of a project that aims to unearth the cinematographic memory, which is also historical, of the place.
Julián Iglesias is the one who set out, many years ago, to recover that memory. He arrived in Hoyo de Manzanares in 1986, and always heard the same comment: “I’m going to walk around the sets.” One day, walking with his wife, he saw that there were some ruins of what had been a movie set. He, who had always liked research, was “bitten” and began to look for what had happened in those lands. He began to ask, search and create a database of the shootings that had taken place in his new home.
In 2010 he had a list of about 30 films that were shot there, and they already seemed “outrageous.” Now, thanks to the Internet and the time spent, you already know that more than 150 were filmed in Golden City. Despite this, the best-known town continues to be Almería, especially since that one “has endured over time”. There were also others in Catalonia and Aragon, but those have met the same fate as Golden City: oblivion.
With their association they make guided tours. Two or three a year. They have to make an explanation to the people so that they understand what that town meant, because if not, when they arrive at that empty esplanade they see nothing. An area that “well treated would have been very good even if they were a few remains.” One of the main problems is that the town settled within the Cuenca Alta del Manzanares Regional Park, a protected area, and any activity requires specific permits. It was in 2010 when the few remaining remains were removed.
“The only thing we managed to make it stay are two original troughs from the movies that have been kept with the promise, by the council, to restore them and fill them with water. In this summer time, farm animals have a place to drink and they are filled with a tanker truck and at least we have managed to maintain it”, says Julián Iglesias. One of the reasons they give for denying them any activity is that “they don’t want it to become a theme park.”
This May they have achieved something different. An archaeological excavation to unearth the cinematographic memory that the land of Hoyo del Manzanares hid. The result has dusted frames used by directors, prop bullet casings, bricks from old buildings and coins from filming. Leading the project was Jesús Alonso Martín, an archaeologist who says that this project was born within the framework of his doctoral thesis, dedicated to “contemporary archaeology”. Two terms that seem like an oxymoron, since when one thinks of a term like ‘archaeology’, centuries-old excavations and little-known civilizations always come to mind.
When they told him about Golden City, he thought it was logical that the first western town in Spain would become “the first filming site to be excavated in Spain using archaeological methodology.” It is also a way of publicizing this enclave, since “many people do not know this place or know that very important westerns for the history of cinema were filmed there.”
A movie set is not considered “archaeological heritage”, but even so it has had to request permits from the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage, and has applied the same methodology as if an Egyptian tomb were excavated. “The people who passed by when we were doing the intervention asked us what we were doing, and I said, well, digging. There were people who said that this was not an excavation because ‘it was very current and very contemporary,’” he recalls his action.
Being located in a regional park, one of the conditions for being allowed to carry out the excavation was “leave everything as we found it”. The team worked with a biologist to protect the most sensitive plants so that there would be no problem with the fauna and flora of the place. “The grass has to grow, but I covered the holes that had been made, so you no longer see absolutely nothing except some walls that were already visible and that I left a little more uncovered so that they could be seen in the future in the guided tours, so that the people who went could see a little bit”, confesses the archaeologist.
Everyone would like it not to be an ephemeral excavation, but “it is difficult”. “At a material level, I mean the property, there is nothing left. They literally took it down, with a lot of zeal. You could try to make a museum with the rescued material, that would be good. A museum of the filming, of the daily life of the actors and extras, but unfortunately they didn’t leave much behind”, says Jesús Alonso sadly. The unearthed material is not considered archaeological heritage “because it is not old enough”, but having been granted permission and carried out with archaeological methodology, it has been delivered “to the Regional Archaeological Museum as if it were Roman tableware”.
A self-financed activity, without public aid, and from which “on a material level many things have come out”. A pioneering activity that shows that the cinematographic memory of a country is also historical memory. “We are very closed-minded, and it seems that because it is not archaeological they do not consider it heritage. In the Sad Hill cemetery ―mythical setting in Burgos where the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly― They tried to get heritage protection for film space and I think they have not succeeded. Let’s see if we can do it with Golden City. Hopefully, but it is difficult to make people understand that archeology can also reach our days and that it can study anything”.
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