Balanegra

The road into Balanegra runs between plastic and water. On one side, kilometre after kilometre of polyethylene greenhouses shimmer like trapped heat; on the other, the Mar de Alborán slides west towards Morocco, visible in clear weather as a bruised stripe of mountains sixty kilometres away. This is the western gateway to Spain's greenhouse coast, a place where lettuces outnumber people and the beach is an afterthought to the evening irrigation shift.

At first glance the village seems to have been sketched on the back of an envelope. A white church tower pokes above single-storey houses, a single roundabout handles traffic from the A-7, and the promenade – barely a kilometre long – ends abruptly at the yacht club's low breakwater. Balanegra sits only sixty metres above sea level, low enough for the night-time humidity to cling to car windscreens, high enough that the Sierra de Gádor still blocks the worst summer heat. The result is a climate that feels more North African than European: mild winters, warm springs, and Augusts so fierce that the streets empty between two and six.

The beach itself is a ribbon of dark volcanic sand that squeaks underfoot. It stretches for three kilometres, but never widens beyond thirty metres; at high spring tides the sea nips at the foundations of the front-row chalets. British visitors expecting dunes and beach bars will find instead a single blue-and-white chiringuito that opens at weekends and a row of concrete breakwaters designed to stop the whole lot washing away. What the beach lacks in postcard perfection it gives back in solitude: even on the first weekend of August you can stake out ten square metres without overlapping a neighbour's towel.

Behind the seafront, the village grid was laid out for farmers, not tourists. Streets are just wide enough for a tractor pulling a trailer of peppers; balconies hold crates of tomatoes ripening in the sun rather than geraniums. The agricultural calendar shapes the day. Dawn starts with the clatter of irrigation pipes, the afternoon belongs to siesta, and at dusk the greenhouses exhale warm air that smells faintly of basil and wet earth. If you time a walk for half past eight you'll share the promenade with workers coming off shift, still in plastic overalls, heading for a quick beer before supper.

Eating here is straightforward. The daily menu at Restaurante El Ancla – chalked on a blackboard at midday – costs €12 and begins with soup thick enough to stand a spoon in, followed by fried anchovies that arrive head-on and requiring nothing more than lemon and a dash of confidence. Gambas al pil-pil sizzle in individual clay pots, the garlic oil perfect for mopping up with baguette that costs forty cents from the bakery next door. Pudding is usually loquat ice-cream, made with fruit that grows on every other street; the flavour lands somewhere between apricot and pear, mild enough for children weaned on vanilla. Sunday lunch is the only service that needs booking: local families treat it as the week's social event, squeezing four generations around tables pulled together on the terrace.

Evenings wind down fast. By ten the yachts are locked, the chiringuito shutters drop, and the only light left comes from the supermarket's refrigerated cabinets. Nightlife means a plastic chair outside Bar Central, watching the fishing boats blink their way back to Adra five kilometres west. The nearest cash machine lives inside the SuperSol, so fill your wallet before it closes at nine; the bar will accept cards, but the ice-cream van won't.

Walkers can follow a dirt track that leaves the marina and curls past the salt lagoon, where flamingos sometimes stop in April on their way north. The path is flat, shared with irrigation quads, and ends after forty minutes at a ruined watchtower that once warned of Berber pirates. Beyond that, the greenhouses close in like a tide of plastic. Serious hiking needs a twenty-minute drive inland to the foothills of the Sierra de Gádor, where marked trails climb through abandoned almond terraces to 1,000 metres and give views clear to the Cabo de Gata. Summer attempts should start by seven; the combination of sun and concrete reflects heat like a kiln.

Access remains the biggest drawback. No UK operator includes Balanegra in any brochure; the nearest airport is Almería, fifty minutes east by hire car. A twice-daily bus connects with the city, but the timetable is designed for schoolchildren, not suitcases. A taxi from the airport costs around €70 each way, so the arithmetic only works if you're staying a week and don't mind driving on the right. Once here, parking is free and unrestricted – another clue that mass tourism hasn't arrived.

The village makes no apology for what it isn't. There is no castle, no artisan market, no cocktail bar serving drinks in coconuts. The souvenir shop doubles as the tobacconist and stocks little beyond sun-cream and postcards of places forty kilometres away. What Balanegra offers instead is an unedited slice of Spain's productive coast: the smell of tomato leaf on the night breeze, a beach quiet enough to hear your own footprints, and a restaurant where the owner remembers your order from yesterday. Come for three days and you'll leave with a tan, a litre of local olive oil bought from the cooperative, and the odd sensation that you've been let in on a secret everyone else drove past.