It is an amazing thought that the largest desert area in Europe was caused by felling trees for shipbuilding during medieval times. Now, the barren expanse in south-east Spain is being groomed as a future rival to the Costa de Sol in terms of golfcourse development.

There was rich irony in this historical nugget being proffered by an Englishman, whose country the tree-cutting was intended to defeat. "We're looking at where they sourced the timber for the Spanish Armada," said course architect, Peter McEvoy, of an area of 550 acres, a few miles inland from the Mediterranean coast.

On seeing the spectacularly bleak terrain, one could readily understand its appeal for film director Sergio Leone when he sought a location to shoot his classic spaghetti westerns, A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Having flown into the small airport of Almeria, we had travelled on for 40 minutes by road. In another direction, the Desert Springs development is one hour and 40 minutes from Murcia Airport, while Alicante is a further 10 minutes away. In the event, the first of three courses was being seeded during our visit earlier this month and will be open for play next March. The par-73 Indiana Course, which measures 6,892 yards off the back tees, is intended to have a desert feel about it. In fact, it will be Europe's first desert course, similar in ambience to established venues in Arizona and California.

As part of the process, mature cacti have been transplanted from Tenerife. And 300 cars were bought from local scrap yards. Three-hundred cars? Next time you're watching televised golf from those courses in Arizona and you marvel at the dramatic boulder formations, think again. They are not rocks, but old carbodies which have been shaped into "rocks". So it was that when we saw a group of spectators moving a large "boulder" - a designated movable obstruction - for Tiger Woods during the Phoenix Open, they could do so with remarkable ease.

"I went to Scotsdale, Arizona, to study how they did things in their desert courses," said McEvoy, whose partner, Craig Cooke, was involved in the design and construction of Loch Lomond and Valderrama. "I quickly learned that you simply couldn't move rocks for the sort of formations that we have become familiar with."

The upshot was that the scrap merchants in Almeria supplied the shells of vehicles for 6,000 pesetas each - about £28. After a bulldozer has knocked them into the desired shape, groups of car-bodies are covered by wire mesh. Then the plaster spray is applied, after additives have been used to achieve the desired colours: not all boulders are grey.

Beside the tee on the 574-yard opening hole is a starter's cave. This was fortuitously revealed after some of the extensive excavation work on the site. And it could hardly be more appropriate, given that the local townland is called Cuevas de Almanzora, which means the Caves of Almanzora. Over the next 12 years, it is anticipated that the Desert Spring development, which is the brainchild of the Almanzora Group from Cheltenham, England, will build 75,000 houses in the area, quite apart from three golf courses. Indeed an entire village has already been constructed as the first phase of the overall project. By the time the second and third courses - the Arizona and Colorado - are built, work would already have been completed on a golf academy and clubhouse. Meanwhile, it seems there is considerable interest already being expressed by investors from this country.

It could be said that the south of Spain is spreading its golfing wings.