A few days ago, I watched on television a story related to a village, in the centre of Spain: Yebes (in the province of Guadalajara and belonging to the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha).
This village is located in the region of La Alcarria, 879 metres above sea level.
The entrance to the village
The Town Hall of Yebes
The municipality of Yebes is composed of 2 urban nuclei: one, the village of Yebes, and the other, the PAU (Program of Urban Development) of Valdeluz --where the Guadalajara-Yebes station is located, one of the stops included in the layout of the Madrid-Zaragoza-Barcelona-French border High-Speed line--.
A general view of Valdeluz
A general view of Valdeluz close up
Another view of Valdeluz
The entrance to Valdeluz
Valdeluz
Some houses in Valdeluz
Here you can see another urbanizations in Valdeluz:
Guadalajara is the most unpopulated province of Spain. However, it can also boast of having the largest population of people, in the last ten years: Yebes. A decade ago, there were only three hundred people living there, now there are almost 4,000 inhabitants –concretely 3,518 in 2018--.
The capital, Guadalajara, is 11,75 kilometres from Yebes.
The future of Yebes changed with the Urban Plan of Valdeluz; and Valdeluz began to grow thanks to the AVE (High Spanish Speed) Station.
The AVE station
At the beginning, the train did not arrive; but the situation was reversed, with banks selling broken real estate houses, at a low price. But the train arrived and they began to attract people.
The AVE arriving to Yebes
AVE stations with fewer daily passengers
These are some data of the Station:
Address: Highway N-320 Sacedon-Cuenca, Km 6. Guadalajara.
Schedule of the Station: Daily: 7 to 23:15 hour
Telephone contacts:
Station Information: 912 432 343
Renfe: 912 320 320
Information, reservation, sale, change and cancellation of tickets: 912 140 505
The people who started arriving and staying, in Valdeluz, were young (35 years old, more or less) and had children. Work began to be created and there were more and more services.
In September 2017, the public school, Jocelyn Bell, of Yebes and Valdeluz, opened its doors and each year has more students and more teachers.
The School “Jocelyn Bell” of Yebes and Valdeluz
A general view of the School
As a proof of the success Valdeluz was having, after the AVE Station was built, in 2014, it was said that 7,000 more houses had to be built.
Free land in Valdeluz
Although Valdeluz is separated from the village of Yebes, its economic strength reverberates in the traditional village.
One of the important services offered by Yebes is its Sports Centre (Municipal Sports Centre"Valdeluz") --which was inaugurated on August 31, 2013-- .
Building the Sports Centre before summer 2012
General view of the sports centre
Sports centre of Valdeluz close up
Another service, offered by Yebes, is a Golf Course.
A general view of the Golf Course
Anothe view of the Golf Course
Relatively close to the Golf Club
The Golf Club close up
But in Yebes there is another important place: the Yebes Astronomical Centre, that is the largest and most important astronomical observatory of which the National Geographic Institute (IGN) counts, as well as being its instrumental development centre. It is on a plain at 980 masl, in which there is little annual rainfall and little wind.
General view of the Astronomical Observatory
The Astronomical Observatory near
Unlike Yebes, within the urban gravitational orbit, Villaseca de Henares does not stop being one of many municipalities that survive with great difficulty, in one of the territories with the greatest loss of inhabitants, in all of Spain. It is inside the hemicycle of high depopulation that surrounds Madrid and that includes the east of Castilla-La Mancha, the south of Aragón, Castilla y León and the east of Galicia. The comparison between the last municipal census and that of ten years ago leaves the village of the Alcarria as the municipality that has lost most population, in relative terms. They are 29 registered, 67% less.
Villaseca de Henares in the province of Guadalajara
Well, I hope that you will like this article.
Until my next post, kind regards,
Luis.
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