Abandoned: The ghost villages of Spain as 70% of rural land home to just 10% of population

Vultures and olive pickers are the only visitors to Oliete in November but for this small village it is the most important time of the year.

Harvesting olives from the gnarled trees that ring the settlement in the mountainous Teruel region of eastern Spain has become a lifesaver.

In May 2014, the community launched the website ApadrinaUnOlivo.org – meaning adopt an olive tree – allowing anyone to sponsor a tree for €50 per year. The money raised was used to form a not-for-profit organisation that created 13 jobs for villagers. For their money, sponsors can collect two litres of olive oil. So far, 9,000 people from around Europe have joined up.

Despite efforts to use olive oil as its lifeblood, like so many other villages across Spain, Oliete is still dying. With a population of only 343, it is struggling desperately to prevent terminal decline. The school population was once just four. But it has risen to 16 this year – just enough to save it from closure. When schools shut it is a death knell for any community.

Among Spain’s 8,131 ­municipalities, 3,403 are classed as at risk of dying out, according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE).

For decades, millions have left rural villages to seek a better life in cities mostly on the coast or in Madrid, meaning 70% of Spain is home to just 10% of the population, according to INE.

About 90% of the population – around 42.3 million – are squeezed into 1,500 cities and towns which occupy 30% of the land.

What is left is known as La España Vaciada – literally, the emptied Spain.

There are 6,800 villages with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, many with less than 12.5 inhabitants per square kilometre. These villages have a combined population of 5.7 million, making up about 8% of the country’s total population of 47 million.

There are also believed to be more than 500 abandoned villages and hamlets where no one lives.

One of these, Salto de Castro, in north-west Spain, has just gone on sale for £227,000. For that, a buyer gets an entire village, including 44 homes, a hotel, a church, a school, a municipal swimming pool and even a barracks building that used to house the civil guard.

Faced with these stark ­depopulation statistics, the Spanish Government became the first to set up a special ministry to tackle the decline of the countryside. It is called the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge.

Last year, the government unveiled a £10.5 billion programme, partly funded with European Union regeneration cash, to try to reverse the tide.

It unveiled a series of 130 ­measures, including extending 5G coverage to remote areas, help with setting up co-working centres in villages and more aid to find work for women in the countryside.

Earlier this month Scottish External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson travelled to Spain to discuss the issue – one from which some areas of Scotland also suffer – and met Spain’s director general for depopulation strategy, Juana Lopez Pagán. The issue has become hugely ­divisive in a country where rural voters traditionally backed the conservative People’s Party.

Lack of infrastructure such as ­motorways, amenities like hospitals, and even cultural assets like cinemas or theatres created a feeling of resentment among those left behind in the villages.

It spawned a platform of scores of rural groups called – appropriately enough – España Vaciada. It was inspired by Teruel Existe (Teruel Exists), a movement that campaigns for the region it ­represents and has one MP. In 2019, it attained relevance on Spain’s polarized national political landscape when Teruel Existe gave its support to the minority left-wing coalition, ensuring it could assume power.

With another general election due next year, this collection of farmers-turned-politicians could assume similar political importance as the election result is far from clear.

Tomas Guitarte, the MP for Teruel Existe, said the movement broke through on to the national stage because of anger among voters in the region at the lack of successive governments’ help to deal with the problem.

“It was the first time in Spain that a group of voters from the countryside reached parliament,” he told The Sunday Post. “It was the fruit of territories that saw no action had been taken and they were condemned to a situation of underdevelopment, leading them to depopulation.”

Guitarte said that, despite the ­government’s ambitious plan to stop the exodus from Spain’s villages and small towns, it still had not done enough. “The government has recognised the existence of the problem and agrees with our solutions but, in reality, it has not taken enough measures to make genuine change. It needs to do more,” he added.

The government last month cut social security contributions by 20% for inhabitants and companies in Teruel, Cuenca and Soria, the three regions that have the lowest population density in the country. Almost all the businesses in these areas are classed as small enterprises where often ­ only a handful of people work.

Alejandro Macarrón Larumbe of Demographic Renaissance, a foundation that studies rural depopulation, believes Spain’s countryside faces a bleak future because of its low fertility rate.

On average, Spanish women have 1.3 children, according to INE figures for 2022, while in 1950 it was 2.4.

“The situation only gets worse. We have a big deficit of children. Migrants tend to have more children. But they tend to go to cities. So the depopulation of rural areas is not improved by migrants,” he said.

“Migrants can be part of the ­solution but they cannot be the whole solution. Ageing populations do not have growth. I come from Asturias in the north which was one of the wealthiest parts of the country 50 years ago but now one of the poorest because it has an ageing population.”

In Oliete, campaigners are fighting to stop the place from succumbing to the same fate as other “pueblos muertos” – dead villages – with only ghosts for inhabitants.

In 1910, the village was home to 2,533 people and had two cinemas and two dance halls. But all that has gone and life revolves around one bar. Still, local people insist there is reason for hope.

“The school population has gone up. We hope that people will move here for some time to discover the ‘real Spain’ for a while. There are green shoots,” Alberto Alfonso, one of the founders of ApadrinaUn Olivo.org, told The Sunday Post.

Villagers are also constructing a co-working centre which they hope will attract digital nomads who want to taste the “real Spain” rather than just live in Barcelona or Madrid.

Spain’s parliament last week passed the Start Up law that will offer a special visa to non-EU citizens, with a tempting tax perk thrown in.

The idea is to attract and encourage talented remote workers to relocate to Spain. It is expected to come into force in January.

Whether these digital nomads will be tempted by the charms of picking olives and dodging the vultures in Oliete remains to be seen.