Almunécar to San José, 117 miles, Free aire, 1 night.
If you drive east from Motril or Almunécar along the Autovia de Mediterraneaneo towards Almeria, then sooner or later a conversation concerning the socio-economics of the tomato trade will come up as a matter of course. The view from the window is quite monotonous. You note mountains (Pete: blimey snow!), remark on the wonder of civil engineering you happen to be driving along (Gill: I wonder where they put all the rock out of this tunnel), but inevitably, your attention must turn to the humble tomato.
Unless you visit the area the phrase 'the place is covered in plastic' might seem hyperbolic, but it's true, most of the coast in Provinces of Granada and Almeria has been shrink wrapped. Gill took a couple of photos from the cab, but they don't quite capture the sheer scale of Tomatoland, so later I took a screenshot of the area from Google Earth. The plastic roofed greenhouses cover the landscape like a misplaced polar sheet covering 165 square kilometres of terrain.
We stopped for lunch in a shopping mall car park on the outskirts of Almerimar. We needed bread, and the Carrefour Hypermarket stocked ingredients that are not always readily available in Spain, such as crème fraise and cous-cous. As we ate lunch Gill flipped through the photos she had just taken of the plasticulture; she glanced out of the window at the the sprawl of canning factories, packaging companies and huge distribution centres that surrounded us. "In some ways it's all very impressive," she mused, "but I am in two minds about it."
It is impressive when you consider that forty years ago the area was mostly an arid semi-desert with a few coastal towns connected by the narrow N340 clinging to the edge of cliffs and snaking through the bare coastal hills. You get occasional glimpses of the old road far below from the motorway which strides across ravines on stilts and burrows its way through mountains.
The motorway, the plasticulture and the hypermarket all interconnect, and in a time when the dominant narrative focuses on the failings of the EU, developments hereabouts speak of its success. The single market allowed Spain to capitalise on a growing demand for all year 'summer' vegetables in Northern Europe. This itself was a bit of a cultural revolution as meat and two veg Europeans developed a taste for a healthier and more delicious 'mediterranean' style diet. European Regional Development funds assisted with the task of improving infrastructure, the big supermarket chains - Tesco, Carrefour, Lidl lent logistical nouse, and Spanish growers seized the opportunity and shrink wrapped their sun drenched, but infertile desert and enabled it to blossom by building reservoirs in the mountains. It's a startling piece of mass industrialisation that largely has gone unnoticed.
In human terms it is an impressive story of ingenuity, ambition and entrepreneurship. The environmental impact, however, is immense. In terms of carbon emissions then it is difficult to imagine the environmental implications of building and maintaining 165 square kilometres of heavy duty plastic greenhouses.
Then there are the infrastructure developments - motorways, reservoirs, warehouse and industrial complexes. Though Spain has been canny about investing in renewables, the manufacture of wind turbines and installation of solar farms is hardly carbon neutral. Once the infrastructure is in place then trucking the produce to distant markets has a continuous environmental impact.
This tale of Christmas tomatoes could be thought of as contemporary fable illustrating the contradictions between consumer driven global economics and the need to looking after our planet, and maybe today is a particularly apposite moment to be pondering such matters.
From liberally minded, good-hearted online friends in America I have witnessed an outpouring of fear, paranoia, outrage and despair as the implications of Donald Trump's total victory by a whisker sinks in. I understand their visceral response; I felt sore and upset for weeks after the EU referendum result. The difference is, though we Brits may suffer collective delusions of grandeur regarding the greatness of Britain, there can be no doubt that the USA is a global giant in terms of economic clout and military might. So whereas Brexit is a local disaster affecting mainly the UK, 'when America sneezes the world catches a cold' to quote the cliche; this time though, it could be a case of pneumonia.
Trump's victory has been achieved by appealing to the disillusion of the white working class, pandering to the fears of the old over the hopes of the young, and playing the race and immigration card, just like Brexit in many respects. However, Trump is more overtly a wheeler and dealer than any of our Brexiteers. He is 100% pro global tomatoland, and utterly scathing about environmental protection. For anyone of a Green persuasion this is a dispiriting moment.
As we drove past Almeria towards the Cabo de Gata, Gill kept entertained me by reading snippets from the BBC News app. Tucked away among the stories of fear and loathing in Los Angeles, at the bottom of a thread in the economics section, was a report that confirmed that that 'green' concerns about the Trump victory were not merely the ramblings of boho liberals - a wingeorama as Secretary Boris phrased it. The markets were already reacting. On the Dow Jones shares in leading renewable energy companies were taking a battering whereas the banking sector was making big gains. More worrying, the biggest spike had been in the armament and weapons sectors; value of shares in BAe Systems, for example, had grown by 20% overnight. If you are a peace loving person with an interest in the well-being of the planet, these are dark days.
The Capo de Gata is protected due to its unique coastal landscape of extinct volcanoes and dramatic cliffs. The plasticulture stops suddenly at the edge of the National Park. Though less than 30km from Almeria, the place feels remote and villages like San José have a relaxed, slightly alternative ambience. A sign just outside the village advertising some new apartments reads, 'San José, desconectado del mundo!
It's a tempting proposition, buy a house by the sea somewhere lovely and slightly remote, avoid the news, buy an unsmart phone, go for a swim most days, take a walk...think your own thoughts. There's a line from a Joni Mitchell song (maybe 'Electricty') where she wishes 'to find a good dog and some trees, out of touch with the breakdown of this century.' Is that the answer - simply do your own thing while the world quietly falls apart around you? As she said, 'We're not goin' to fix it up too easy.'
The thing is, I am interested in the world and its cultures, so to ignore it, somehow I would feel diminished, no matter how much, to quote once more the mighty Joni, 'Readin' the news, and it sure looks bad, they won't give peace a chance, it was just a dream some of us had.'
However, to take a short break from 24/7 media hysteria, somewhere beautiful, just for a day or two...that's what we need I think, and perhaps this desert island marooned in a shining sea of plasticulture is our best hope of some respite from the news which does seems ever more gloomy and disconcerting.
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