There are many things I love about the Spanish, and particularly about the people here in Almeria Province (the 'Almerienses').  The obvious reasons are their friendliness and kindness, but another quality I love is their disregard of any attempts to turn the landscape and the seashore into private property.  The right to roam is accepted and widely practiced - although no one would trample a small farmer's crops (not that it's possible to grown much on this thin, stony, barren soil).

The castle, San Ramon, on the shore at Playa del Playazo, changed hands a couple of years ago and the new owners have put up fences and warning signs in a vain attempt to stop anyone having access to the tiny cove behind the castle (accepted as the local 'nudist' cove because it can only be accessed by scrambling across some steep, almost vertical rocks), or to the headland and clifftop around the castle.  The Spanish ignore the signs and simply step over or around the fences; where necessary, they knock the fence down.

 They don't damage the landscape but they disdain anyone who tries to claim it for themselves at the expense of others!  The landscape and the sea belong to all, especially in the Natural Park.

Juan Goytisolo was from Catalonia but he, too, loved this region - first and foremost because of its people:
"Almeria is a unique, half peninsular, half African city.  I fell in love with it, before ever going there, through the men and women who came to Catalonia in search of work and were given the most backbreaking jobs, I hasten to add. One is free to choose one's homeland: after my very first visit, I have traveled every year hundreds of kilometers to pay my respects."

In Campos de Nijar, Goytisolo offers a bitter, if implicit, criticism of selfish landowners in his portrait of the wealthy Don Ambrosio, who has bought the entire village of La Isleta del Moro and who shows nothing but contempt for his poor tenants.

Don Ambrosio passes Goytisolo on the road and, when Juan waves his arms, he gives him a lift in his chauffer-driven sedan car.  He is described as "A lean, rather aloof, middle-aged man ... wearing a bottle green suit, striped shirt, and black tie."  He takes to Juan when he hears he's Catalonian, not Andalusian, and talks of the local people with savage contempt, boasting that he has some Castilian blood.  He wants to make money out of the area, telling Juan:
"'If there was a decent road, tourists would flock here.  This is a better coast than Malaga and life's much cheaper than it is there.  You can buy a fisherman's cottage here for three thousand pesetas.  People are emigrating and selling up for next to nothing.' . . . 'In less than ten years I've bought a whole village.  You'll soon see.  It's the one past Los Escuyos [Los Escullos].'"
When they pass a little shepherd boy "barely a meter tall and already earning his living", Don Ambrosio declares that it's right the children of the region don't go to school, "'Hunger's the best teacher.'"  He goes on to tell Juan "about the backwardness in the province and rails against Andalusians" saying they don't "'recognise the value of things ... When they've got money, they spend and spend, as if it were burning their fingers.  The poorer they are, they more spendthrift they become.'"
It is no surprise when he reveals that he was on Franco's side in the Civil War, complaining of the atrocities commited by the socialists, "'You young people can't imagine what it was like.  The prisons were full of property owners, priests, and pillars of society.'"
They drive through Los Escullos, a poverty-stricken, neglected little village of "grey hovels," as Juan describes it, "there are no streets, or even paths that merit a name", Don Ambrosio shows no concern for the grim lives of the inhabitants, only for the rundown state of the castle, San Felipe, owned by a family he knows, "'I remember the day Dona Julia got married as if it were yesterday'" he tells Juan.  They climb up to admire the view from the castle ramparts and the local civil guard comes puffing up to pay his respects.

When they reach La Isleta del Moro, "a small fishing village at the foot of the crag consisting of around twenty tumbledown houses", it becomes all too clear that Don Ambrosio only wants to exploit it - to force out the local population, renovate the cottages, and rent them to tourists.  He shows no sympathy or compassion for his tenants when they complain of overcrowding and ask for his help.

"People move aside to let us pass and we walk on in silence.  The houses are built right by the seashore.  The Cape protects the cove from the gales and the waves don't lash the beach as they did in Los Escullos.  Half a dozen trawlers sway to and fro, anchored opposite the rocks."
Juan Goytisolo's description isn't so very different to La Isleta today, although, of course, there are a lot of new buildings, the road Don Ambrosio wanted so much has come and many of the houses are holiday cottages, but there are still fishing boats swaying to and fro.  What Don Ambrosio would have found unthinkable is the fact that tourists only come today in order to see the fishing boats and because building here in the Natural Park is strictly controlled!

Before they leave the village, they visit the home of a woman dying from an injured leg that has turned gangrenous.  The woman lies in a coma while her family and friends watch on, powerless to help her.  Juan is struck dumb by the horror of this appalling scene but Don Ambrosio mouths a few platitudes, clearly unmoved; as soon as they are back in the car, he continues to pour scorn upon the Almerian people, talking of them as feckless, irresponsible, having "'a real slave mentality'".  We don't need Juan to tell us what he thinks of this as we already know the Almerians he met in Catalonia always did the "most backbreaking jobs", and here on the Cabo he's seen them struggling to survive and look after their families as Don Ambrosio never has and probably never will.