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Spain: The Puzzle Of 1,800 Villages With Only One Inhabitant

Loin the crowded alleys of Madrid and Barcelona (when the Covid-19 was not yet rife), it is a Spain less known to tourists. There, explains International mail according to information from the Iberian newspaper The confidential, entire villages are abandoned, or almost. In 1,800 of these localities, among which, also, parishes or hamlets, only one and only inhabitant remains.

The Spanish media echoed the “rural agony” that hit the country, and specified that most of these abandoned places are located in the autonomous communities of Galicia and Asturias. The daily explains: “Where there were previously twenty people who lived from agriculture or livestock in five scattered dwellings, there is often only one very old person or a last peasant, who, having inherited of a farm, has chosen to take it over. ”

Telework, the hope of the abandoned village

Always according to The confidential, villages and other hamlets are a thorn in the side of local government. Because they must ensure a minimum service and provide electricity or garbage collection and the passage of public transport.

However, many municipalities are trying to revive these isolated localities – a hope made possible in particular by the rise of teleworking, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. To do this, they do not hesitate to renovate old houses or facilitate the installation of potential new inhabitants.

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