It is early morning in Terra Chá, in the province of Lugo, with a cloudy day over the plains, where the rural exodus is also noticeable, despite being the area with the highest livestock activity in the province.
Olga watches the first rays of sunlight through the window after getting out of bed.
Fernando’s chickens in the field. Precariousness is present in rural areas. Those who live off the land face economic difficulties. “What saves me is that I hardly spend anything on food because I eat everything I produce and what my animals produce,” says Fernando.
Adela and Manuel are the last inhabitants of a village that once had 13 inhabited houses. Adela and Manuel end the rainy winter day playing cards, taking care of the animals, and collecting eggs from their chickens.
Herminia takes care of Victorina, Pepe’s 93-year-old mother. Pepe, meanwhile, checks his pills, as he suffered a stroke a few months ago and cannot move on his own. Meanwhile, María, Herminia’s sister, helps her with the cooking. Herminia also takes care of the vegetable garden. She is still waiting for approval from the social services department to apply for assistance, but she has been in this situation for months.
Magdalena observes the windmills, which, according to her, have only increased depopulation because the wealth stays with the large energy industries. Magdalena Fernández Cortiñas lives in a village with her 40-year-old son and another neighbor, Abel, who is 80. She says that everything has become depopulated very quickly. The livestock barely provides enough for her to live on, and the situation has become more complicated since her husband died. Her son works occasionally in the forest, earning a wage that helps the household.
Ofelia gathers her flock of sheep with an old off-road vehicle.
The Ancares region, in the mountains of Lugo, northern Spain, at nightfall. The vast geographical dispersion means that the territory is dotted with villages where, in many cases, only one person lives. The geographical dispersion of the region accentuates the rural exodus, as loneliness and isolation are greater.
Domingo is 88 years old and lives alone in an isolated village in A Fonsagrada. He lights the wood stove on a cold winter night.
A day in the life of one of Manzaneda’s last shepherds, Manolo de Palleirós. The goats and sheep spend the summer in the curro, an enclosure where they sleep and graze on the meadows during the day. The Palleirós brothers take turns staying with them in the mountains for days on end.
Depopulation is the process by which political actions or omissions lead to the disappearance of the population from a territory. Death by depopulation is slow and silent. It is ruthless to the territory, nature, and heritage. The situation is no less dramatic for the people who live, or rather, resist in rural areas. Those who live in absolute solitude in a silent, silenced, and misnamed empty Spain. In reality, it is not yet empty.
Europe is the oldest continent in the world. According to Eurostat, one of the regions most affected by aging is Galicia. There is a high percentage of elderly people with a lack of residential autonomy or with a certain degree of dependency who are reluctant to leave the land where they have lived all their lives. They live alone where care and assistance are conspicuous by their absence. These are extremely worrying social contexts given the lack of resources on the part of the administration and the passivity, full of implicit violence, of the political actors involved. A large part of the aging population is abandoned in these areas with a lack of care and very limited social and health coverage.
These are traditionally smallholder farming areas due to the winding terrain that makes intensive production impossible. The current voracious market for macro-production and overproduction, coupled with a lack of telecommunications and quality connections, means that the demographic pyramid in most areas is inverted. There are population centers where the pyramid does not even have a base due to low birth rates and massive rural exodus.
The depopulation of rural areas is one of the causes of numerous environmental problems, such as the increase in the severity of forest fires and soil erosion.
If there are no radical changes in this regard, the death of the last rural inhabitants will bring about the death of a social model, and Spain will become empty.
