Not as bad as we thought?

  The older inhabitants of Yegen, Valor and Mecina Bombaron - those fortunate, well-watered villages of La Alpujarra, have harrowing tales to tell of times when refugees visited them. They came not from some war-zone, but from the drought stricken areas around El Ejido and the Campo de Dalias. They were fleeing the spectre of starvation; seeking food to keep their families alive.

In the space of considerably less than one human lifetime, however, the Third Horseman of the Apocalypse has been banished from these arid pains and Almeria has been transformed into what has been called The Garden of Europe and the richest province in Spain. All thanks to those sprawling hectares of plastic.

the olive press

BOB MADDOX goes gunning for the greenhouses that cover Spain’s southern coast. But El Gringo Maddox, who normally shoots from the lip when plastic is concerned, finds that those invernaderos could be the key in the fight against global warming