skip to main |
skip to sidebar
"One mayor is trying to give away an abandoned village in his district for free, so long as 'buyers' promise to restore it and add back value – ideally drawing young people while they do so."
If Galicia cannot turn back its demographic trends, says Xoaquin Fernandez Leiceaga, a former lawmaker and professor of economics at the University of Santiago de Compostela, parts of it could quickly turn into wildland. “Already villages of Galicia are being overrun by weeds and bushes,” he says.
But there is more at stake than policy and economy: identity. In an interview on the coast, far from the rural interior, Mr. Fernandez Leiceaga says that nearly all Gallegos have a piece of land handed down from their parents – himself included – and that Gallegos idealize their rural heritage. “We still have a rural mindset,” he says. Yet, “it is a world that is disappearing, with nothing to substitute it.”
Posts
17 comments:
If only there were some way to collect our illegal immigrants and transport them over there.
I guess it's safe to assume they already speak spanish.
Actually it sounds like an idea for a reality TV show. "LIVE LIKE A PEASANT"
Maybe the Syrian/Afghan/Somali/Iraqi/Malian/Senegalese "refugees" can make them an offer they can't refuse.
Spain was a Moslem country before; why not again?
Saw the same thing in Bulgaria several yrs ago. Large sections of the countryside left to the wild. Different reasons of course.
Constructing some strategically-placed Class A office space within clusters of abandoned villages might get the villages -- and the tax base -- going again. The Government of Singapore used to do this. They would start building factory space and then go out and look for a business to move in. And for the most part it worked.
Galicia wasn't Moslem.
It was where the Iberian resistance against the Moslems began. The Reconquista can be counted from when the Galician cheftains resistance aquired a religious flavor, with the miracle of the Campus Stellae (Compostela) and the finding of the remains of St. James (San Tiago - Santiago).
The Galician countryside can be pretty grim.
Its all nice flowers in the hills in the spring, but winter can be horrible.
Consider that the winter rains in Galicia are on the scale of the Philippines wet (typhoon) season. But in Galicia, it comes down cold. Sleet, hail and snow.
To compare, it gets twice the rainfall of the Scottish highlands.
Went to the real estate Web site listed in the article, there are a interesting properties available. It was interesting.
I've seen the same thing in Japan. Countryside homes that are mostly now abandoned. Those residents who remain are pretty much the very elderly and the houses aren't livable in winter.
I'm sure there are some Syrians in refugee camps in Jordan that would take them, rain and sleet included.
I guess it's safe to assume they already speak spanish.
Yes, but it's the Galician dialect of Spanish — otherwise known (further south) as the Portuguese language. Portugal is a sovereign nation with an army and a navy, so its dialect is considered a separate language; Galicia is not, so it's stuck with a dialect — but it's pretty much the same thing.
Also in Southern Italy, beautiful abandoned villages on top of hills. There is no way for young people to make a desirable living, ghost towns that are hard to reach. I like the idea of migrants moving into them, growing crops on the hillsides but they head for overcrowded cities and a desperate life instead.
I recall that there are lots rural Yemen-ese. Maybe the civil war there could be settled by re-settling half the belligerents into Galicia. Cheaper for the Saudis than constant bombing, maybe?
What problems could that possibly cause?
Post a Comment