Top Spanish coastal resort the Costa Blanca has been chosen as the filming location for a lavish TV production of an Ernest Hemingway novel.

Garden Of Eden, a Hemingway tale set on the French Cote d’Azur in the 1920s, is being filmed in the equally Mediterannean setting of Costa Blanca towns Altea, Alicante and Alcoy.

Luckily for the region, Torrevieja’s local yacht school was able to provide vintage Vela Latina triangular-sailed fishing boats – part of the 1920s setting – which were key in dictating the Garden Of Eden team’s choice of southern Spain.

The English, Spanish, Italian and Polish co-production features an American writer honeymooning on the coast when a sultry Italian upsets the marital calm – with Mena Suvari leading the bill of Hollywood names gracing the Costa Blanca for the duration of filming.

Suvari paid tribute to the region and the Spanish experience in a web blog: “I am in Spain working on Garden Of Eden and we are in our rehearsal period and just having the best time. Everyone is so lovely and Spain is just exquisite.”