Driving north from Almería

Driving north from Almería I am reminded, once more that this is Spain’s driest, dustiest corner. Every time I come here, I am shocked by the harsh, unforgiving nature of the landscape. Even Old Castile, with its parched, yellowed plains, has nothing on it. Water is the local gold, fought over by neighbours, villages and towns. The politicians in Madrid invent, and then scrap pharaonic systems for diverting the rivers of northern Spain down to this parched corner of the country. Ancient irrigation systems, Roman or Moorish in origin, allow the soil to perform the miracle of growing things., The plants traditionally grown here give an idea of the almost biblical nature of the place. There are acid – sweet meddlers, almonds, carobs (which supposedly kept St John the Baptist alive in the wilderness) and, inland at Elche, ancient plantations of date palms that transport you straight to the Arabian desert. The mountains here are all rock. They rear up in great, glinting shards or loom, hazy, grey and menacing, in the distant, pulsating heat.
From the book 'Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet