Ghost villages are for sale in Spain
A demographic shift has left the Spanish countryside with hundreds of ghost villages, telling tales of people such as Gustavo Iglesias.
Iglesias, like others in the hamlet of Acorrada in the northern Spanish region of Galicia, moved to a larger town for work, leaving behind a village with six graystone houses and two horreos, or grain stores, overlooking a lush valley. His family had lived there for generations, growing wheat and tending to cows, but by the time his father died about 30 years ago, it had emptied out, abandoned and left to crumble.
Now, the 57-year old — who works as a port policeman in Burela, a fishing town on the Galician coast — has joined with other owners to put the hamlet up for sale, trying to give it a new life. The asking price? Just $96,000. “I’d like someone to buy it and do it up so that it continues to have a life,” Iglesias said.
Spain’s countryside is dotted with hamlets such as Iglesias’ that are being sold after their owners abandoned them. For the government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who made the reversal of rural depopulation a key policy issue when he came to power last year, such efforts can help stem rural desertification before it tips into crisis territory.
“We need to be aware of the demographic winter that threatens a large part of our territory,” he said at a forum in March. “Half of Spain’s municipalities have fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, and a large part of our territory is at risk of depopulation.”
Adventurous foreigners and enterprising Spaniards are starting to be seen as part of the solution as they buy some of the hamlets, taking advantage of bargain prices. Aldeas Abandonadas, an estate agency specializing in such sales, last year sold about 40 villages, with foreign buyers accounting for 90 percent of the transactions. The company recently got a boost after Gwyneth Paltrow flagged one of its villages on her website as a good Christmas present.
“People are coming from all over the world to buy,” said Pepe Rodil, a manager at the agency, who pointed to the area’s famous food — octopus, scallops and clams as well as heavy winter bean broths with chorizo and pork and chorizo in cider — as a draw for potential buyers.
There are about 1,500 abandoned hamlets in Spain, said Elvira Fafian, the founder of Aldeas Abandonadas. An increasing number of them are being put on the block since local councils require owners to maintain their properties, which many can’t afford to do.
While urbanization is emptying rural areas across large swathes of Europe, the trend is dramatic in Spain. About 53 percent of Spain has a population density of fewer than 12.5 inhabitants per square kilometer — among the worst rates in western Europe.
Spain’s fertility rate of 1.3 percent in 2017 was the second-lowest in the European Union, after Malta, and the gap in the country between urban and rural births is one of the widest in the EU. A lack of young people means the population isn’t replenished, while the regions also lose the entrepreneurs who might have generated employment and driven the local economy.
A recent European Commission report highlights depopulation in rural areas and the pressure on Spain’s cities among issues of concern. Madrid, Barcelona and the string of smaller cities along Spain’s sunsoaked Mediterranean coast don’t yet face the challenges of pollution, traffic congestion and strain on infrastructure seen in megacities, but they’re sure to surface in the future.
“Lots of experts say that 70 percent of the population is going to live in megacities by 2050,” Isaura Leal, commissioner for the government on rural depopulation who stepped down ahead of elections, said in an interview in Madrid. “We believe we have the capacity to reverse that process. There is still time.”
Tiny steps are already underway. Increasing the reach of broadband internet that allows people to work from home is one measure being studied. Providing incentives for people to move into rural areas is another. In Asturias and Galicia, the local government partly funds the restoration of roofs on traditional houses.