The school closed a decade ago and the beautiful, if dangerously crumbling, church shut its doors in January, but this tiny village in one of the most unpopulated and forgotten corners of Spain is making a brave attempt to stave off a slow death.
With just 109 inhabitants and an average age of 53, the village has already shrunk to a sixth of the size it reached at the height of its glory more than half a century ago. A third of those who remain are over 65.
"We'll probably all die here," said 76-year-old Victor López, as he sat with his friends on the bench they occupy daily in the village square. "Our own children all emigrated and there are only a handful of young people now. My generation grew everything from cotton to corn, but no one wants to work the land any more."
As in many villages in this harsh, dusty corner of Teruel province, the fight for survival requires special measures. In an attempt to attract new inhabitants, Castelnou is now offering cheap houses, free land, an exemption from municipal taxes, and even a municipal babysitter to those families who wish to settle and bring children who might give the village a future.
This week, around 400 people travelled from all corners of Spain with their families to see what the village, tucked into a rocky hillside and surrounded by abandoned olive groves, had to offer. As the streets teemed with children for the first time in decades, elderly neighbours recalled fondly how it had been in their own youth.
"We need the young here. They bring joy," said pensioner Sara Galicia.
It was a meeting of the needy and the desperate. As a makeshift car park beside the ancient stone bridge across the thin trickle of the River Martín filled up with cars from around Spain, family after family told the same story – of the struggle to find work and raise a family in a country where one in five people are jobless.
"I used to work installing aluminium windows but now there is no construction and I've been out of work for two years," said Argentinian immigrant Rafael González, who arrived in Spain six years ago.
Rafael and his wife, Andrea, brought their daughter Valentina on the two-hour drive from Terrassa, an industrial suburb of Barcelona hit hard by unemployment. Their determination to find a better future would, they said, overcome the difficulties of living in a place with some of the most extreme weather in Spain.
"The village is nice," said Valentina, seven, as the thermometer soared above 100F (38C). "But all the things in the playground were so hot that I couldn't touch them."
"We fry in the summer," admitted López. "And the winter is freezing. Then everyone stays indoors – like snails in their shells."
The "children's caravan" – which was greeted with a playground of bouncy castles and a free paella lunch for 500 people – was the idea of mayor José Miguel Esteruelas. Where other Spanish villages threatened with extinction have brought caravans of single women to meet the local farmers, Mayor Esteruelas decided to bring in children.
drive from www.guardian.co.uk
COMMENTS
No Comments