He and his boss came up with a master plan. He would hide behind the role of extras in his films. He would take on their identity and live anonymously, staying in roadside motels, and live happily ever after. This is how the shy Johnny turned into the charismatic “Hurricane Jones”, the extra with a thousand faces.

Everything went smoothly at first. He played roles with no hitches, went unnoticed in the credits and nobody even remembered the boy who used to hand out coffee on film sets anymore. But the calm always comes after the storm, and it lasted until the rain came back. One phrase, one miserable phrase catapulted him to stardom: “Hey bandit, go back to where you came from” became a meme, a trending topic, a challenge, an Instagram filter…

And good old Johnny had to flee fame in the most unexpected of places.

An American in…TABERNAS. That’s where he ended up. A tiny, sunny town in Almería where the best spaghetti Western scenes in history had been shot. There was no doubt that this was the best place to hide and seek new acting opportunities. Who knows? He may have even been the driving force behind the new genre called the “New Age Spaghetti Western”.

What awaited him was the most authentic Western set every created, the place concealed by the huge desert of Almería, whose name (which means “Taverns”) couldn’t be more perfect for the genre. But he wondered, what were the people like?

Not even in his wildest dreams could he have imagined such a warm welcome. And not only because of the thermometer reading that day (40ºCº!) but also because of the warmth of the locals. The entire village was holding banners welcoming the film crew, and three words sufficed to make Johnny feel at home: “AMERICANS WELCOME HOME”.

Discover more about the village of Tabernas.

It was the mecca of spaghetti Westerns during their heyday in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. This tiny village in Almería, wrapped in the Tabernas desert, was known around the world as the “Spanish Hollywood” since it had one of the most prestigious Western production studios. Its famous Fort Bravo – Texas Hollywood studio painstakingly reproduced the landscapes of the Far West, making them part of the scenery in over 300 films. The celebrities that set foot there include the Italian director Sergio Leone, who filmed the most mythical trilogy with Clint Eastwood:

“A Fistful of Dollars”, “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”. That was how Tabernas became famous and featured in major Western productions, as well as films in other genres like “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Cleopatra”, “Conan the Barbarian” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.

Johnny had been living in the wild, wild Spanish West for over 4 years. Ever since his debut in spaghetti Westerns, he had garnered critical respect and been given a star in the famous “Spanish Hollywood” Walk of Fame.

We’ve seen him morph into Bad Clay, the canny bartender at the saloon; Tennessee James, the most sought-after outlaw in the desert; and Jack the Avenger, the evil sheriff of El Paso. Because of his numerous Western roles, good old Johnny D Jones is known in Tabernas as “El Gringo”, although in the taverns, too. He usually sits with his glass of wine to make friends on the terrace of “Rincón Andaluz”, so much that he’s now famous among the townspeople and they’ve created a bottle of dark red Tempranillo in his honour (with a screw-top, the way he likes it). So now everyone can toast together under the sun with a plate of delicious “hamon”.

And for folks who are wondering, those fellows never did figure out his whereabouts. Maybe they never pursued him, or maybe they never even saw him. But that’s another story.