2016

Just a few days ago I was in this 'galerie d'orange'. A place at the end of a pilgrimage route, a place near a cathedral. Ending 2015, entering 2016.

Thank you, dear reader of Pilgrimage and Place.

See you next year.

Rural flight

Perhaps half of all abandoned villages in Spain are in Galicia. As processes of aging, rural flight (& urbanisation) and bad (economic) perspectives continue, this development will increase. Will immigration or tourism have an impact?

I collected some fine articles, a book and a movie on the subject.

So, if interested, go ahead ;-)

Population increase (red) or decrease (blue):

(Source and also population map of Europe on CityMetric here (Jun 2015))

Have a look at this 13:11 documentary on Galician Ghost villages published by Celtico on the situation of the living landscape and on a family started to live in a former abandoned village.

See also this article in NPR (Aug 2015)

In Spain, Entire Villages Are Up For Sale — And They're Going Cheap

or this one in Christian Science Monitor (Aug 2015)

For sale in Spanish 'paradise': entire villages. Cheap.

or this one in Financial Times (Dec 2014)

A Spanish exodus to the cities leaves a desert in its wake
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or this pictoral impression of Molina de Aragon, the least-populated place in Europe in MailOnline (Mar 2015)

This is in contrast with research from CheckmyBus (nov 2015) where The Camino de Santiago with place five rates among the top ten of tourist attractions in Spain, with Santiago de Compostela on the sixth place (LaVoxdeGalicia).

More information in

The Depopulation of Rural Spain in the Twentieth Century

by Fernando Collantes and Vicente Pinilla, 2011

(book review here)

In 'Reducing Depopulation in Rural Spain: The Impact of Immigration' the authors (Fernando Collantes, Vicente Pinilla, Luis Antonio Sáez and Javier Silvestre, 2013) discuss research on the impact of immigration that could lead to substantial reduction.

(Here available online)

Immigration and depopulation is also subject of the article 

'Silent blight in a countryside of empty homes and shut shops'

in The Guardian (Aug 2015):

"Young people are leaving rural areas of Europe for the cities at a time when birth rates are at historic lows. As the countryside empties, should rising immigration be seen as a solution, not a problem?"

(Click here to see)

(And for Dutch audience a link to a report from Henk Jan Slomp on depolulation in Spain, specific Matarraña, Teruel (2004))