A hamlet in Cortegada, a rural town south of Galicia, is being given away for free. Other villages in rural Spain are also now up for sale due to inhabitation and abandonment.
Cortegada mayor, Avelino Luis de Francisco Martinez, said that he is willing to give away an entire hamlet in his town, if and only if the one who will take the property will promise to renovate 12 ruined houses in the area.
"They're beautiful - bucolic! Next to a river and an 18th century royal procession path," Mayor Avelino says. "We just need to find someone to live here in this century," the mayor went on to say.
Galicia is one of the rural areas in Spain that suffers from inhabitation due to migration of its villagers to the urban areas that have medical centers, modern transportation, education, and employment.
Galicia has the lowest birth rate in all of Europe with only 1.1 offspring for fertile women, reports NPR. The region is in danger of losing all of its population after 35 years. Other rural areas in Spain are also suffering the same population loss. Most of the country's villages have only elderly and retirees.
Mark Adkinson, a British Real Estate Agent, is on a mission to find abandoned villages and offer them to prospective foreign buyers. "Some of the places I'm finding have been empty for 50 or 60 years," Adkinson says. "And my job is to try to find the descendants," he added.
One of the villages for sale is O Penso. It has a total land of 100 acres and comes with six houses, two barns, and a big cattle barn that can hold up to 70 cattles. The village also has a free well water, a bakery with a stone hearth, and is six miles away from where green cliffs drop off onto white sand beaches. The said village can be bought for only $230,000.
