The autonomous community of Galicia, in the north of Spain, is looking for foreigners (including Cubans) to “cohabit” its “empty villages” of a few thousand inhabitants. Would you like to access the program? Details below.
In rural Spain, there are many empty houses in many parishes, so: Would you like to try living in a village?
“Think globally, act locally, revive the rural” is the proposal of a coliving initiative in Senderiz, a small town in Lobeira (Ourense, Galicia), located 35 kilometers from the border with Portugal.
Sende is “the world house dreamed of and made a reality” by María Rodríguez and Edo Sadikovic, a Galician social worker and a Serbian entrepreneur, who after opening the first hub in the Balkans, ventured in 2013 to buy two stone houses in this forgotten town, which has 80 roofs and 20 inhabitants.
Since then, nearly 5,000 people from 60 different countries have passed through there, according to María, coming from places as far away as Trinidad and Tobago, Japan or Singapore, to shape their ideas in the Ourense mountains.
According to the Spanish newspaper Confidencial, the Galician regional government has identified in this model of cohabitation another tool to combat one of its biggest challenges: the accelerated ageing that is emptying villages and abandoning land.
Galician government program seeks foreigners for its towns
According to the Galician government, rural coliving is an option to revitalize the rural environment affected by depopulation and attract new inhabitants to a community that is losing population at a rapid rate.
To promote synergies between coliving and entrepreneurship, they launched Fixar, a pioneering project which took its first steps this summer. This programme is the result of an agreement between the Ministry of Employment and the Sende Cultural Association.
The project started in July with 60 participants selected and awarded scholarships from among the nearly 200 applications received.
These participants enjoyed a 15-day immersive experience in rural Galicia, with accommodation, coworking spaces and tutoring, divided into groups of 20 people between three coliving houses located in three provinces: Sende (Ourense), Anceu (Ponte Caldelas) and iSlow, in Laxe, on the Costa da Morte.
In Spain, there are around 5,000 coliving spaces, mainly concentrated in large cities such as Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao or Salamanca, but also in places such as Jávea, Montseny or Somiedo (Asturias).
A significant number of Fixar participants have been Galician returnees or foreigners residing in Galicia, who are looking to change their professional careers and establish themselves in rural areas. For more information about the program, click here.
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