28th June 2020
During his 40 years in Spain it has always seemed to Bob Yareham that the best of this country is its towns and its people.
In the month of July he is going to pay tribute to various film towns in different areas of this wonderful Spain, a country of cinema.
On July 11th he will be in Sajazarra, a jewel of a town in La Rioja where Stewart Granger, the British heartthrob, shot his latest film, Oro Fino, a promotion financed by a local Falcon Crest-style winery.
On the 19th he will be in Ampudia, Palencia, where the first of the 4 castles that appear in the movie El Cid is located.
Spain is full of movie towns, where Hollywood’s biggest stars have taken advantage of local charms to film.
They are towns that do not receive as many visits as Barcelona, ??Madrid, Segovia or Toledo, but which are worth seeing as they all have one or more films to promote themselves.
In Atienza, Guadalajara, Katherine Hepburn filmed Las Troyanas, while Audrey Hepburn was in Nottingham (Artajona, Navarra) to share the screen with Sean Connery in Robin and Marian.
Richard Harris turned Coca’s castle, Segovia, into Camelot, and Marlon Brando played Torquemada at the Parador de Sigüenza in Christopher Columbus: the Discovery.
A few examples among the more than 870 films shot in English in Spain.
Professor of history and English Bob Yareham, located in Valencia for almost 40 years, has dedicated himself to promoting these towns with lectures in movie towns such as Uclés, Cuenca, (the 4 Musketeers) or Chinchón, Madrid, (The Fabulous World of the Circus with John Wayne), encouraging city councils to take advantage of the added value that these films give to the common charms of the towns.
On this trip, accompanied by the Scottish expert John Hill, apart from the mentioned towns, he will be in Cuenca, Navarra, Cantabria and Asturias, and with the daily collaboration of a Spanish-British newspaper The Olive Press, published in Spain, he hopes to help fill these ‘film towns’ with northern Europeans in search of ‘real’ Spain, that there are many living on the Blanca and Sol coasts.
This is just a road trip and a couple of conferences, there is no cost, just turn up! Some things in life are FREE!