“Of course everything is missing here!” Hugo Domínguez laughs and then counts: “There is no school, no doctor, no pharmacy, and we have to drive 120 kilometers for purchases that go beyond our daily needs.

On this road, ”he adds, pointing to the narrow path that leads out of the village of Albendiego and gets lost on the horizon between the sun-faded cornfields and fields of deep red earth.

“But there is time here.” Domínguez takes a deep breath.

"Time to reflect on the important things in life and to work on yourself."

New hope for old places

That is why the social worker and his partner Verónica Romero have turned their backs on Madrid and moved northeast with their daughter to the province of Guadalajara. Romero's grandfather grew up here before the rural exodus in Spain turned thousands of spots like Albendiego into places forsaken by God, where only a few old people stayed. "Forgotten by everyone, condemned to gnaw at my memory and my bones like a great dog", Julio Llamazares lets his protagonist complain in the novel "The Yellow Rain" in 1988.

A good 30 years later, of all things, it is a pandemic that gives many of these places new hope: because the descendants of the previous residents remember at least on the weekends of their search for a corona-compliant distance from the narrowness of the city. And because some are also opened up for tourism.

The couple, who immigrated from Madrid, are very busy this Sunday. Albendiego currently officially has 33 inhabitants. There were 150 in the 1950s. It is approaching 12 o'clock. It's too early for lunch in Spain, but the right time for a chat over a glass of beer and “algo para picar”. Romero and Domínguez have taken over the former elementary school, which was converted into a bar many years ago, but not run, as well as the holiday apartments in the early "Casa de Consejo", where a doctor lived and worked. The tables in the courtyard and the seats at the bar fill up quickly. The tortilla bites are pale because they have no egg. Ham, chorizo ​​or anchovies are also missing from the menu in a very unspanish way. The hosts are vegans, but that doesn't detract from the mood among the guests.Better a vegan inn than a closed one.

Mario J. Gallego, the mayor of the rural alliance for an open Guadalajara (ARGA), appears in a T-shirt and baggy trousers as if he had just fallen out of bed. The fact that Gallego has brought the Myau circus festival to Albendiego every year since 2013 and with it visitors from the entire region also contributed to its popularity and the 2019 election victory. “A circus without animals,” he emphasizes.

In addition, Albendiego can look forward to another attraction: a group around an entrepreneur from the region has just bought a centuries-old mill on the Bornova river, which was still in operation until the miller's death two years ago.

The “black architecture” of the building made of dark slate stone, which is typical for the area, should be preserved, says Gallego.

The new owners wanted to develop a project for rural tourism on the property with a campsite, guided hikes and workshops on all aspects of environmental protection.

You need money and an off-road vehicle

The buyer found Elvira Fafián. The real estate agent has been running her agency “Aldeas Abandonadas” in Barcelona for 14 years. Demand has never been as great as since the outbreak of the pandemic. As the German translation of the agency name - abandoned villages - suggests, not just individual buildings are on offer, but entire villages. Llirt in the Pyrenees, just before the border with Andorra, is one of them. You need to have patience and an off-road vehicle for the tour. Fafián warns that the last three kilometers will only go on unpaved roads. The village, or rather what is left of it since the last residents left it at the end of the 1950s, sticks to the slope like a small cluster of bird nests at an altitude of 900 meters. Ruins of five houses and the church of Sant Jaume,of which only the apse is left. Plus a few fields and meadows where wheat once grew, chickens pecked and pigs wallowed. There was never electricity or running water here, but 300 hours of sunshine a year and a view of the Sierra del Cadí mountain range. 43.86 hectares for 749,000 euros. Basis for negotiation.