One of my little trips around the Cabo de Gata national park was a drive up to Rodalquilar.

Rodalquilar was once a prosperous mining town. It had it’s own little gold rush in the 1860s and the mines continued to work to some extent up until the 1990s.

welcome to Rodaquilar…

It’s a small village now with only a hundred or so inhabitants, although when the mines were owned by the state and run as a going concern in the 1950s there were around 1,400 living here. In fact, there is a little collection of derelict houses on the outskirts of the village, that were once used to house the mine workers. Long since abandoned, the authorities have put up some fencing around them and a few ‘danger keep out’ signs.

Ghost town

The Cabo de Gata region is full of these little abandoned ghost towns, which have been left to crumble. Only recently the local authority has started to fence them up, realising that they should maybe seek to preserve them.

The village itself contains a sprinkling of restaurants and a shop, plus a few art studios. At the top of the hill overlooking everything is the old abandoned goldmine (you could walk if you get there early enough before the sun starts beating down but really you need a car for this).

It’s an eerie place. It has been used as a movie set on many occasions; the most notable film to be shot here was Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, in the 1980s.

Although inland, there is a beach around 3 kilometres away from the village, however now I have a car there is no stopping me and so I drove on to Isleta del Moro, which is a tiny little fishing village. The village only got electric in the 1960s and it’s like taking a step back in time.

Isleta Del Moro