Live News From Spain As It Happens

A VILLAGE in the province of Teruel is calling for a family with school-aged children to go and live there, offering guaranteed employment, three months' free rent and a heavily discounted price thereafter.

The land-locked north-eastern region of Aragón is one of several in Spain struggling to keep its population up and fighting complete extinction, as rural isolation leads to adults of working age leaving for larger towns to be able to get jobs, and parents with children moving out due to lack of schooling facilities.

Villages in what has lately been dubbed 'Empty Spain' are trapped in a vicious circle: The only real employment is agriculture, they are too far to commute to bigger towns for other types of job and, even though the idea of working from home whilst living in an idyllic rural haven and close-knit community is proving highly attractive to an increasing number of office staff, this can only function if reliable, good-quality internet and mobile phone coverage is guaranteed.

And the dwindling rural population, with villages often up to 20 kilometres apart and separated by mountains, means telecommunications operators are not willing to invest in the infrastructure as it is not economically viable with such a small customer base; even less so when considering that those who are not forced to move away for practical reasons tend to be the elderly, who are less likely to feel the need for a mobile phone, WiFi or broadband.

Although Spain's government is working on a serious overhaul of State support for remote rural villages, which will include subsidising telecommunications installations, tax breaks and other incentives for companies that invest in these areas or set up operations there, these initiatives will, necessarily, take time – so the villages themselves are seeking quicker ways to keep their headcount up.

Read more at thinkSPAIN.com