Golden sands and silver screen: Spain's Star Wars and superheroes beach

SOMETIMES the breathtaking beauty of Spain's landscape and beaches makes you feel as though you must have stepped onto another world. And sometimes, you'd be right to think so.

If you're on Almería's Mónsul beach, for example, you're actually on the planet Fantasia from The Neverending Story, and several parts of the country witnessed scenes out of Game of Thrones.

Or if you're on Fuerteventura's Cofete beach, you're really on planet Corellia, where Hans Solo was born.

Star Wars fans will instantly recognise this 12-kilometre stretch of golden sand with its volcanic landscape backdrop, not a high-rise in sight, since it's where life started out for the character played by Harrison Ford in the 1970s trilogy A New Hope, Return of the Jedi and The Emperor Strikes Back.

Solo scenes of Harrison Ford's native planet

In Solo: A Star Wars Story, the young Hans is played by Alden Ehrenreich in a 2018 flashback episode that sees him and his childhood friend Qi'ra – played by Game of Thrones' Emilia Clarke – orphaned, escape a local gang, bribe an Imperial officer with starship fuel they stole in a bid to get out of there, and separated as Qi'ra is captured and Hans joins the craft as a cadet.

They are reunited later, by which time Hans has made friends with the man-sized, loveable furry character Chewbacca.

One of the biggest-budget films ever made – at US$275 million – starring screen legends of the magnitude of Thandiwe Newton, Donald Glover, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Paul Bettany – Solo: A Star Wars Story didn't make Cofete beach famous, however.

That's because it already was.

Aping film history

Half a century before the Star Wars prequel, although barely a decade before the original saga was invented and became a cult favourite for a generation, Charlton Heston was filmed kneeling before a semi-submerged Statue of Liberty on the sands of Cofete beach as the waves broke around him in that much-copied and instantly-recognisable classic cinema scene.

This, one of the most memorable and iconic shots that closed the 1968 Planet of the Apes, had already shown Fuerteventura's shores to cinema-going kids who are now either newish pensioners or just approaching retirement age.

But the 21st century has, arguably, seen the most Hollywood exposure for this dramatic coastal enclave in the Canary Islands.

Biblical beach

Prolific director Ridley Scott had already created blockbusters filmed in Spain. The Counselor, shot in 2013, used a mansion on the northern Alicante-province urbanisation Monte Pego for some of its scenes. That same year, auditions for 4,500 extras were advertised in Almería and Fuerteventura, where the entire outdoor filming for Exodus: Gods and Kings would take place.

Indoor scenes were shot at Pinewood Studios in London, but about 70% of the biblical epic about the early life of Moses, starting from his being rescued as a baby floating down the river in a basket through to his parting of the Red Sea and receiving and then smashing up the Ten Commandments on stone tablets on Mount Sinai, was filmed in the arid, mountain scenery near Pechina and Macael in Almería province, and in its Tabernas desert.

The latter had already served as the Wild West of the USA for a generation of cowboy movies, and the sets – which are still in place and intact – can be visited on guided tours.

Exodus: Gods and Kings' remaining 30% of outdoor scenes were shot on Cofete beach in Fuerteventura and in the nearby towns of Pájara and Antigua.

Another élite production, this historical drama set in the year 1300 BCE (BC) starred Christian Bale as Moses, Joel Edgerton as Ramses II, Aaron Paul as Joshua, Sigourney Weaver as Tuya, and the Goya Award-winning Madrid-born actress María Valverde.

Natural Wonder 

From a comic strip to an on-screen cartoon character and then films and series with real humans, the seemingly invincible character of Wonder Woman served as a fantasy icon for decades of little girls, who grew up taking for granted that females could be superheroes, that very feminine, girlie-looking figures could take care of themselves and protect everyone else from evil, danger and disaster, and that boys and girls could play the same games together and men and women could work together as comrades and equals.

Real life was still only just becoming this way in the developed world when Wonder Woman was first invented, and she and similar female forces to be reckoned with also helped ensure the next generations of little boys had grown up with the automatic assumption that girls were equally as capable and competent, and that it was possible for both to work successfully as a team.

All this is back in the news again in the 21st century, as society seeks to fine-tune the ground-breaking equality that made huge steps 40 or 50 years ago – and to remind men that they don't necessarily have to be superheroes all the time, either.

So bringing Wonder Woman back to our screens was a fitting move, and taking her back to her on-screen roots served as an exercise in reflection – and in making children of the 1980s suddenly feel old.

As if the vinyl record and cassette-tape revival hadn't done that already.

And, of course, she was a brilliant advert for Spain, being the star of a US$166m-grossing show, a multi-platform epic distributed via Warner Bros, HBO Max, and finally on analogue TV in time for Christmas at the end of 2020, to cheer the world up after an extremely difficult year.

Gal Gadot shot to international fame in Wonder Woman 1984, as the young Diana Price who discovered during the Cold War that she had super-powers on a round-the-world filming trip that took cast and crew to Alexandria, Virginia; the Capitol in Washington DC; the White House; the Smithsonian; London's Regent's Park and Hyde Park; Duxford Imperial War Museum; and mainland Spain and the Canary Islands.

Almería's Mediaeval fortress, the Alcazaba, and the Cerro de San Cristóbal hill, the provincial capital city's La Almedina neighbourhood and Las Amoladeras area, and parts of the Cabo de Gata coastal nature reserve became a backdrop for action-packed scenes.

Then, production moved to Fuerteventura, using the Corralejo Dunes National Park, the Parque Holandés, El Jablito, the town of La Oliva, and Cofete beach and Jandía nature reserve for key parts.

Wonder Woman 1984 wrapped in Tenerife in September 2018, an island that has been used in several box-office hit productions in the past few decades, including Fast & Furious 6.

Rugged and relaxing, with or without stars

Cofete beach is quite a hike from its nearest civilisation – 22 kilometres as the crow flies from the closest village, Morro Jable, but taking around 50 minutes to get from the latter to the former, as the journey involves crossing the Jandía nature reserve. But it's easy enough to get there on wheels, as the beach is very well signposted and has a car park right next to it.

By daylight, you can imagine yourself as Wonder Woman, Hans Solo, or one of the other fictional household names who have graced our TV and cinema screens in the past 54 years with Cofete beach behind them – but this wide strip of shoreline is equally as popular with visitors by night.

Cofete beach is described as having some of the best star-studded – literally – views, and after-dark tours are regularly run there; in fact, it was voted the third-best 'Starlight Reserve' destination in the Canary Islands in 2015.

Between the two, sunset scenes explode in a multi-coloured palette, reflecting off the millpond-calm sea as the lunar-looking mountains fade into watery shadows.

Or you can admire it in miniature long before you get there, from a handy viewing point offering a sublime, raw, desert-coast panorama from the mountains above.

Once in front of the dazzlingly-blue waters off the north of Fuerteventura's Jandía peninsula, you're guaranteed peace and quiet, despite its international fame – it's one of just a handful of completely undeveloped, virgin beaches in the Canary Islands and, being on the edge of an officially-protected nature reserve, will stay this way forever.