{"id":278440,"date":"2025-07-20T22:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T22:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278440\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T22:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T22:36:13","slug":"across-europe-remote-villages-are-fading-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278440\/","title":{"rendered":"Across Europe remote villages are fading \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicol\u00e1s de la Fuente, a 92-year-old walking his dog on the desolate streets of Molezuelas de la Carballeda, remembers the Spanish<\/a> village\u2019s heyday as a flourishing farming community. \u201cWe had everything,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThere were five herds of 500 sheep each. There were two herds of 600 goats. There were cows, 200 or 300. And horses and chickens.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the era of pastoral abundance is long gone. Commercial activity has virtually disappeared. This remote village of stone walls and unlocked doors has become an economic desert. The average age of its 47 residents has climbed to 70, making it the oldest municipality in Zamora, a northwestern province at the heart of the so-called \u201cemptied Spain\u201d or Espa\u00f1a vaciada. \u201cNow there\u2019s nothing,\u201d says de la Fuente. \u201cIt\u2019s all over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rural depopulation has long been an issue in parts of southern and eastern Europe<\/a>. But the trend is becoming an existential threat for many places and it is spreading across the continent, leaving no country unaffected. While rural areas that are well connected to towns and cities are doing better \u2013 particularly after the pandemic, which triggered a desire for more green space \u2013 the most remote areas are struggling.<\/p>\n

In the decade to 2024, the estimated number of people living in predominantly rural EU<\/a> regions fell by nearly 8 million, an 8.3 per cent drop, while the urban population rose by over 10 million, or 6 per cent. Regions making up about 40 per cent of the EU\u2019s land area and containing almost one-third of its population are experiencing a sustained drop in residents.<\/p>\n

\"AbandonedAbandoned houses in the Spanish village of Burbaguena, near Teruel. Photograph: Josep Lago\/AFP <\/p>\n

Dwindling numbers mean shops and bars are forced to close, buses run less frequently, doctors are harder to find, and classrooms become emptier. This fuels further departures, in what the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD<\/a>) describes as a vicious cycle.<\/p>\n

\u201cCitizens should be equal, but those in rural areas are paying the price with poorer services, higher costs and fewer opportunities,\u201d says Raffaella Mariani, the mayor of a municipality in Garfagnana, an area of Tuscany, Italy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is not simply a concern for those left behind in the emptying rural communities, says Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, director at the OECD\u2019s Centre for Regions and Cities. Depopulation threatens Europe\u2019s cultural heritage, local languages, cuisines, crafts, farmland, traditions and even national security. Maintaining the municipalities in Garfagnana \u201cprotects the cities below\u201d from flooding, adds Mariani.<\/p>\n

\"LamiaLamia Kamal-Chaoui of the OECD says depopulation of rural regions should be of concern to cities also. Photograph: Hatim Kaghat via AFP <\/p>\n

It carries a wider cost to society, generating \u201ca geography of discontent, which in turn creates political discontent, social discontent, putting our democracy in danger\u201d, says Kamal-Chaoui.<\/p>\n

Attempts at reversing the trend range from selling houses for \u20ac1 to encourage new arrivals to restore them, to subsidising vital services and repurposing civic buildings so they can serve several different functions. Some areas are turning to tourism, encouraging second-home ownership even as some other areas turn against it.<\/p>\n

The OECD urges rural areas to \u201cshrink smartly\u201d. This includes consolidating services, boosting connectivity and using technology to improve access to healthcare and education. It encourages rural areas to talk up the opportunities and the quality of life in rural communities. The aim is that this will help shift the narrative away from the challenges.<\/p>\n

But the underlying issues in remote rural areas \u2013 ageing populations, falling birth rates and a paucity of employment opportunities \u2013 will be harder to address. Molezuelas mayor, Alexandre Satue Lobo, says he is trying to maintain local services as best he can, but regards reversing population decline as an impossible task.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to manage it,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t see how the village can go back to being what it once was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drift<\/p>\n

As with many other rural areas, the gradual decline of Molezuelas began with a drift of residents towards industrialising urban areas, such as the Spanish port city of Bilbao or even France.<\/p>\n

The rise of the knowledge economy since the 1960s has made urban centres more important, while many of the traditional industries that were the backbone of rural communities have declined.<\/p>\n

In eastern Europe, decades of centralised industrialisation under Soviet influence helped push rural populations towards urban centres. As a result, protracted emigration and low birth rates are contributing to double-digit rural population losses in Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania.<\/p>\n

Families are having fewer children across most of the developed world. There were only 3.6 million births in the EU in 2024, according to Eurostat, the lowest on record and well below the years up to the mid-1970s, when births routinely topped 6 million annually.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur actual biggest concern, at the moment, is a lack of children,\u201d says Markus Hirvonen, mayor of North Karelia in Finland\u2019s easternmost region. Many of its 13 municipalities have shrunk to a third or less of the population they had in the 1960s. In the cluster of villages that make up Juuka, only nine babies were born last year while 150 people died, Hirvonen says. \u201cNowadays there are a lot of very empty villages,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

As a result of these trends, the EU\u2019s rural population is forecast to shrink by 18 per cent by 2100, with some areas \u2013 including in Bulgaria, Croatia, Portugal and Lithuania \u2013 expected to lose one-third of their rural inhabitants or more.<\/p>\n

In parts of rural Finland near the Russian border, declining population density is viewed as a strategic risk. \u201cWe absolutely don\u2019t want these areas to die,\u201d says Hirvonen, adding that its geographical location means it is \u201cvery important\u201d to maintain \u201cliving villages and small municipalities, and people who are committed to this area\u201d.<\/p>\n

For young people in rural areas, one of the draws of urban centres is universities. This will be the case for the 17-year-old daughter of Danilo Musetti, who runs a holiday home and rental bike centre in Garfagnana. Depopulation \u201cwill be much more dramatic with the new generations as they look for job opportunities elsewhere\u201d, he predicts.<\/p>\n

In Molezuelas, which has emptied out faster than anywhere else in Zamora, the signs of decline are everywhere. The local school closed in 1969. The village football pitch is a jungle of shoulder-high grass.<\/p>\n

As its population declined, services fell away. The health centre, which only opens one day a week, on a Wednesday, is now at risk of closure. The commune\u2019s sole business today is a bar and the nearest big supermarket is 40km away.<\/p>\n

Elderly residents rely on travelling vendors to bring them bread, milk, fruit and vegetables, but they are getting old too. \u201cWe were very well served until recently, but then they started retiring,\u201d says Mar\u00eda del Pilar Mart\u00ednez as she buys a baguette from baker Margarita Casado\u2019s van. \u201cIt will be this se\u00f1ora\u2019s turn soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mayor Satue Lobo, the son of a Spanish emigrant father and a French mother, says he is left clutching at straws. Tax revenues are dwindling, and he is even struggling to get a communal recycling container from the provincial government.<\/p>\n

\u201cI spend a lot of time reading documents about the subsidies we might be able to access,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Tax breaks<\/p>\n

Most European countries have initiatives in place to revive or stem the decline of rural areas.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s \u20ac13 billion demographic plan contains 130 measures, including regional tax breaks and housing incentives for the countryside. Italy has a long-running strategy for \u201cinner areas\u201d, the UK has its \u201cshared prosperity fund\u201d and there are so-called settlement officers in the Scottish Highlands in charge of helping people to move or stay in the area.<\/p>\n

In Garfagnana, the lush mountainous region between Pisa and Florence, mayor Mariani uses her own wages to fund extra music and science and maths lessons in local schools, along with childcare before and after the school day, in a bid to attract families. The area also offers abandoned houses for \u20ac1 and subsidies to people moving from elsewhere. Derelict buildings have been restored to create affordable housing for the community.<\/p>\n

In partnership with the Tuscan regional government, local bars in remote hamlets have been repurposed as public service hubs, allowing residents to pay bills, access healthcare appointments and connect to the digital state. To save money, services such as business permits, public procurement and emergency alerts are now provided jointly across over a dozen municipalities in the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe challenge is to improve services, so not so many families desire to leave,\u201d says Mariani. She also wants to see more investment from the national government in transport and connectivity as well as reduced tax rates.<\/p>\n

Yet Garfagnana, classified as an intermediate region by Eurostat because it lies on the fringe of an industrial and urban province, has still lost 10.5 per cent of its population in the past decade. Many of its municipalities have seen their populations halve since the 1960s. A few hamlets are now completely abandoned. <\/p>\n

Most of the local authorities in the areas have lost any banking presence, with an over 20 per cent fall in clothing shops, bars and bakeries over the past decade across the valley. House prices are a quarter of those in the wider province, with a 13 per cent decline just in the past year.<\/p>\n

At the EU level, there is a \u20ac392 billion cohesion fund in the current budget for regional policy, but it is facing pressure to maintain or increase that number in the next budget starting from 2028.<\/p>\n

Last year, former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta called on the EU to enforce the principle of the \u201cfreedom to stay\u201d, to help many areas across Europe stop losing population and basic services, in a high-level report on the future of the single market.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer Italian prime minister Enrico Letta has called on the EU to enforce the principle of the \u201cfreedom to stay\u201d. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri\/ AFP <\/p>\n

The issue was also raised in June by Denis Nesci, member of the European Parliament and rapporteur of a call to action, who wants the EU to implement targeted measures to \u201creverse this trend\u201d of young people fleeing their home towns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ongoing exodus … is progressively weakening these regions,\u201d he said. This deprives them \u201cof the conditions needed for young people to remain in their places of origin\u201d.<\/p>\n

But breaking the cycle of fewer people and more costly and downsized public services is increasingly challenging.<\/p>\n

In the Scottish Highlands, the demographic crisis being driven by \u201cthe lack of sustainable employment, the lack of services provision, and the lack of affordable and available housing\u201d, according to Raymond Bremner, leader of Highland Council. The population of parts of the vast, mountainous region is projected to fall at double-digit rates by 2040.<\/p>\n

The council fights to provide \u201caccess to those services as close to their community as possible,\u201d says Bremner, including buying a bus company to provide affordable services to remote areas and mothballing schools rather than closing them completely.<\/p>\n

But, he adds, \u201cyou\u2019ve got to balance that with providing children a socially supported educational experience where they have the ability to play with their peers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Depopulation<\/p>\n

In North Karelia, the campaign to arrest depopulation has begun in earnest. Remote learning is used in schools to cover specialist subjects. There are funds to attract businesses and investment to rural areas. A mobile healthcare system provides travelling nurses, dentists and doctors to an ageing population.<\/p>\n

Sports centres are free of charge to attract people from the cities where those services are expensive and baby bonuses are offered to young families. Empty schools have been sold to private owners, while others \u2013 often with only a few children on their roll \u2013 are kept running with some pupils brought in by taxi.<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to figure out every day what I can do more … but it\u2019s very, very difficult,\u201d says mayor Hirvonen, who expects depopulation to continue despite the efforts.<\/p>\n

Molezuelas has bet on its appeal as a holiday destination. A string of well-tended second homes has appeared, mostly owned by people from Bilbao or France who are related to those who left the village in the past.<\/p>\n

This points to the future mayor Bert\u00edn sees: a place with little-to-no permanent residents or amenities, but an annual infusion of life in the form of summer holidaymakers.<\/p>\n

There is increasing momentum to recast the narrative around rural areas to reverse their fortunes. Zamora\u2019s provincial government has launched the initiative Mi Pueblo Acoge, or \u201cMy Village Welcomes\u201d, which aims to attract mostly Latin American immigrants to fill jobs in rural areas.<\/p>\n

Alongside the non-profit Talento 58 foundation, which is linked to the church, the initiative has helped resettle 124 families since 2022, including some Venezuelans who are qualified engineers, doctors and administrators.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople call it \u2018emptied Spain\u2019. I call it the Spain of opportunities,\u201d says Jes\u00fas Alem\u00e1n, the foundation\u2019s director, noting some newcomers have taken over local family businesses.<\/p>\n

A similar message is coming from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Christina Morrison, who works for a settlement office in Uist \u2013 a group of six islands that make up the Outer Hebridean Archipelago \u2013 is in favour of promoting a more positive vision \u201cso people could be actually interested in living in these places\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n

Her role is to help people relocate to the Outer Hebrides, or stay in the area where schools are shrinking and closing. While she is frank about the challenges \u2013 a lack of affordable housing, childcare and reliable transport \u2013 she says there is a longer list of reasons to live on the islands.<\/p>\n

Children walk around safely with a \u201cfreedom that you wouldn\u2019t give to a child in the mainland\u201d and then there is the joy of socialising in a supportive, tight-knit community.<\/p>\n

People might be busy with jobs, farming, gardening, volunteering or caring for more vulnerable people \u201cbut there is no stress\u201d, adds Morrison.<\/p>\n

That is on top of the breathtaking natural beauty that the Outer Hebrides is known for. \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere else in the world to be when the sun is shining.\u201d \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nicol\u00e1s de la Fuente, a 92-year-old walking his dog on the desolate streets of Molezuelas de la Carballeda,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[2000,299,5187,1699,2199,104917,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-278440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-european","11":"tag-european-union","12":"tag-italy","13":"tag-organisation-for-economic-co-operation-and-development-oecd","14":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114887955931684275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}