Jacinto de Blas Santos (87) on the soil that now belongs to his son, Juan León de Blas Ayuso (59), in Langa de Duero, a village of the "Empty Spain" (España vacia). Since the Covid-19 pandemic and his wife's passing, Jacinto spends most of his afternoons supervising his son's work in the fields.
With the depopulation of rural areas, Spain faces a major demographical challenge. Jacinto's son biggest concern regarding this matter is the solitude of the elderly, already present and to come.
A view from the hills overlooking Langa de Duero.
The number of stalls present at the weekly market varies from one week to another, with sometimes only two or three vendors showing up.
When she was a teenager, Pilar Cuerpo Sanz, commonly named Pili, didn’t get the chance to study. Few men did, let alone women. She could work as a servant in Madrid or Barcelona or stay at home and help her parents. She chose the latter. During all these years, she has seen her village transform. From muddy streets to asphalted ones, she remembers the ladies sewing in the streets, the kids screaming and playing outside, and the houses left open.
Pili plays la brisca at the elderly centre every evening. They used to be thirty women to gather and play cards. Now, they’re maybe ten. If the elderly centre didn’t exist, the 83-year-old woman wouldn’t mind playing cards at the bar, with the men. Pili would adapt to anything in order not to sink into solitude.
With only 33 pupils, the school must mix the different grades to have enough teachers. “The many cultural activities we can’t attend because of the transportation costs, are probably the main disadvantage of a rural school, though" explains the school principal, Iratxe Baizán Verdejo. "Our education level is as good as elsewhere. In some ways even better because our teaching is very much personalized”. The primary school also receives help from the province and the European union for the development of rural areas. The money is invested in tablets, laptops, and interactive touch-screen boards.
Laura, 16, is planning to leave the village to pursue a higher education. “Here, you live in a bubble. And I want to see the world. But I think that later I would like to live two lives: one in the city, and one in the village.” Her older sister, Paula, left the village when she was 15. “My sister really struggled. She had only one other girl her age in the village. I was lucky enough to have six. When politicians talk about the “empty Spain” they always focus on the infrastructures and services, on the physical, rarely on mental health. Of course, which politician is interested in having a therapist here? There’s no one.”
Laura's mother, Susana Santos de Diego, is the village's butcher. She stayed in the village for her parents and has, for the last thirty years, been slicing steaks for the villagers. “I don’t get sad when I think about the depopulation” she says. “I get sad when I look back at what the village used to be.” On Thursdays, the bus would drop off around 30-40 people from the neighbouring villages of the municipality. The butcher’s shop would be packed. The business would live off these customers, too. Now, most of them have passed away or are in elderly homes. “I started noticing the change ten years ago. Yes, there are still people living in the village now, but there’s no village life anymore”.
Driving down the Calle Real, many inhabited houses can be counted. From the village council and for the next 300 meters, it’s probably two out of three. Some of them are used during the summer, others keep their old storefront.
At home, Juan keeps this picture of his father, Jacinto, his wife and other villagers during a carnival celebration.
In his garden, Jacinto's son keeps the old tools from when the work that can now be done in two weeks was done in two months. Despite the tools not being in use anymore, he refuses to throw them away.
The arrival, since the beginning of the 2000’s, of immigrants from Romania, Bulgaria, and South America to work in the agricultural sector helps mitigate the population loss and keep infrastructures alive. But in right-wing discourses, these immigrant workers are described as "unwanted".
El día de las matanzas (Pig Slaughtering Day) was once the happiest day of the year: sometime in January or February families would kill a pig and the women would gut it and cure the hams. The tradition, due to stricter sanitary rules, is dying away. The cattle raising now happens in industrial farms and the households have no animals anymore, except for chickens sometimes.
On the 15th of May 2023, seventy people gathered for a mass and procession in honour of San Isidro, who, in a land of farmers, is still preached for a bountiful harvest. The festivities lasted all day, but the next morning the village went back to its quiet. Visitors from Madrid, Aranda and Soria returned to their cities.
Compared to other villages, Langa de Duero meets the basic needs of its inhabitants. There’s a pharmacy, a medical center, and a 24-hour medical assistance. There are two bars, from the same owner, one small supermarket, a butcher, and a fishery. Parents can bring their children to the nursery, kindergarten, and primary school. The elderly can meet at a community house. Farming, pork farms, vineyards and some factories provide work to the villagers. The bus service is too poor to solely rely on, though.
Langa de Duero is an intermediate village trying to keep up. But despite its rather favourable situation and some initiatives implemented by the municipality, the demographic tendency remains the same. Young generations leave to study in the cities and end up finding a job there. The inhabitants are mainly old people, and the birth rate is low.
The project was published in DMJX Photo 1 International Students' Magazine - Spring 2023
