In addition to depopulation, a reverse movement is also underway, in which people want to bring abandoned rural villages back to life. For instance, Didac Costa bought the ruins of a hamlet in ...

Imagine if you could get paid just for deciding to settle in a particular Spanish village. It might sound a little far-fetched, but in some corners of Spain, it’s become a genuine offer. A ...

FILE - Sinforosa Sancho, 84, takes a walk in the empty village of La Estrella, Spain, May 24, 2018. For more than 30 years, Sinforosa and her husband Juan Martin Colomer lived alone in the village ...

Svetlana peers over the balcony of her new home onto the empty square in Aguilafuente, a village of barely 600 inhabitants in the depths of Castilla y León. The once-thriving heartland of Spain is now ...

The 10 billion euro ($12.18 billion) plan aims to save rural life in a nation where 42% of villages are at risk of depopulation compared to a European Union average of 10%. Sign up here.

Spain's fertility rate of 1.3 per cent in 2017 was the second-lowest in the European Union (EU), after Malta, and the gap in the country between urban and rural births is one of the widest in the EU.

Spain’s rural villages were already shrinking. The coronavirus has dealt a further blow. ... Life expectancy in California still hasn’t rebounded since the pandemic. July 10, 2025.

See the real Spain by campervan and discover parts of this beautiful country you’ll never see on a package holiday.

DURUELO DE LA SIERRA, Spain (AP) — When someone dies in tightly knit Duruelo de la Sierra, the whole community walks from the church service to the cemetery, accompanying the deceased to thei… ...

In north-west Spain, Terradillos de los Templarios — and dozens of villages like it — were built to host medieval pilgrims walking the 800-kilometer route across the country to the Apostle ...

Small abandoned villages in Spain’s depopulated regions have become home to mothers and children fleeing the war in Ukraine. Svetlana peers over the balcony of her new home onto the empty square ...