A home and a grocery store have become a huge claim to repopulate
Tabanera de Cerrato
, a town in the Cerrato of Palencia of only 142 inhabitants that is looking for families with children and in exchange offers a place in the world for those who seek new opportunities.
"We are looking for a family with children for a brand new home of 85 square meters in Tabanera de Cerrato and to take care of the new grocery store below."
This was the call made this week by the City Council of this small town of Palencia that is looking for settlers and has decided to rehabilitate an old house located in the square to give a family a "home and business".
What neither the person responsible for the announcement, Mayor
Luz Íscar,
nor her husband, Councilor
Carlos Paillet,
imagined
was the interest that such a modest announcement would arouse even outside of Spain.
"We have received calls from
Holland, Germany, France, Uruguay, Argentina
... and from all over
Spain
", tells EFE Luz Iscar, still overwhelmed by the response, since only on the first day she counted 110 calls and in what more than 500 go during the week.
"We are overwhelmed"
"I have stopped counting them. We are overwhelmed, we put him in a group of mayors in the area to spread the word but we never imagined that it would transcend so much," they admit, while they assure that they have been literally glued to the phone all week ear to respond to the barrage of calls and messages they are receiving.
The offer, a house of 85 square meters that is being rehabilitated through the
Rehabitare
program
of the Junta de Castilla y León, for social rent, and a premises on the ground floor, built with the support of the Diputación de Palencia, to set up a grocery store.
"We wanted to provide a business for the interested family and a service for the people," explains its mayor.
The fact is that the work will not be finished until May, but the interest that the announcement has aroused "gives food for thought", he points out, because the City Council is trying to find an "enterprising family that is looking for a change of life and that adapt to living in a town in Castilla ", but the answer has given him face to face with another reality: that" there are many desperate people, who are having a very bad time and need help. "
So much so that only a very small percentage of the calls and the wassap received fit the profile that this council is looking for, which has chosen to ask for the curriculum and take the selection with a little calm "to hit the chosen family", as they did with the other two social housing that they already have rented.
A very important choice, says Luz, because, with the children who arrive, they could ask for a school for Tabanera.
And the grocery store would give service to the residents of this town and those around it,
Villahán, Antiquity, Palenzuela
, who have to go shopping in
Torquemada
or
Palencia
.
A service now supplied by the baker from
Tórtoles de Esgueva
, who brings them fresh bread every day, and the fruit bowl from
Torquemada
or the fishmonger, who pass through Tabanera with their fresh merchandise one day a week.
And although these days it is a little more difficult to get to its corners, because Cerrato has been one of the regions most affected by
Filomena
, the truth is that Tabanera de Cerrato has always been a "very attractive" town where the sun even rises when the whole region is submerged in fog.
But above all it is a town that has known how to "hook" the youngest: half of the neighbors are under 50 years old and have been staying in the heat of the
Paulo Freire del Cerrato Rural University,
which invites us to look back at that rural and sustainable world as a key to the future.
And of "how much our town has to offer," adds the mayor.
"The bar, a country house, three hiking trails, a beautiful recreational area ... even a century-old oak tree."
Without forgetting that, in addition to the Rural University, a true hotbed of culture and rural feeling, Tabanera even has a radio station, K Jabalí, which was born in April to make confinement less lonely, two musicians from the
El Naám
ethnic group
, and many ongoing projects that suggest that from Tabanera it seems possible to overcome depopulation.
"We are convinced that there is going to be a boom in people who, after this pandemic, will want to develop their life project in a town and we want to be prepared to receive them," says Luz Íscar, as she begins to think about new ideas for attract population to this corner of the Cerrato.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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