To the east of Almeria a huge semi-desert region stretches away as far as Murcia and Cartagena. The Romans called it the Campus Spartarius, because only esparto grass grew here. Actually the soil is good, but the rainfall is meagre and uncertain, and sometimes there is none at all for several years on end. […] However, the traveller who has a feeling for lanscape will find that this is one of the most rewarding regions of the Peninsula. It is composed of small plains traversed by low ranges of barren hills that are so channelled and fretted by the storms that occasionally fall that they look like their own skeletons, According to the hour and soil they turn from chrome or cadmium yellow to rose, and from lavender to blue, and in that dry deceptive light seem sometimes to be almost transparent, as though they were made of molten glass or crystal. Then one comes suddenly to a little escarpment and sees below one a river-bed, where the deep refreshing green of the orange trees and of the alfalfa make a complete contrast to the high, light tones of the plains and mountains. Oasis and desert, cave villages and date palmas: one could suppose oneself in Africa, if this country was not on a much smaller scale, whith the detail sharper and better defined and the composition more pictorial than anything to be found on that rolling, space-drunk continent.

Gerald Brenan
[South from Granada]