“In the 1960s, when the decline of rural Spain began, there was some overpopulation in these areas and people emigrated due to poverty, lack of opportunities, geographic isolation due to the lack of infrastructure and services. .. But now the problem is not that people emigrate, but that there is no one to emigrate nor to have children and, therefore, from the point of view of demographic recovery, the only alternative is immigration”, he says Joaquín Recaño Valverde, researcher at the Center for Demographic Studies (CED) of the UAB, who has just published a study on the factors that determined the rural exodus in Spain from and which could now function as protectors against depopulation .
The conclusions are not very encouraging, because he believes that this only alternative, immigration, will not work everywhere either. “In a town of 20 inhabitants, what immigration will arrive? It will be anecdotal, and those who arrive will experience the causes that led to its depopulation”, says Recaño.
Convinced that rural depopulation will increase and that “not all towns can be saved”, the geographer and demographer proposes to focus efforts to slow down the process in regional capitals. “Since we cannot make an investment for all the towns, we must establish a line of defense that they can resist and that, moreover, articulate the territory, and they are the county capitals, many of which already see how the inhabitants are decreasing because the birth rate is neither there nor expected, mortality is there and is increasing due to aging, and young people are leaving to escape the decline”, justifies the researcher of the CED.
This is why he believes that, in the fight against depopulation, public and private investments must be focused on the large towns that make up the population of a rural area and always after studying their future viability. “People don’t improvise: either they are born in a place and create roots there, or they come from another and you have to make them take root there; but to achieve this it is not enough to think of local development projects, build infrastructures or install the internet; it is necessary to assess why those who were there left, because the demographics are very stubborn”, warns Recaño. And he points out that one of the factors that must be taken into account to favor the settlement of immigrants is access to housing, which is not always easy in rural areas.
“Coffee for all policies or local development projects are of no use against rural depopulation; in each area it is necessary to first identify which municipalities are feasible and then to carry out a study of the economic possibilities of the area and its viability; it is necessary to take the pulse of the territory, because the solutions will not be the same as in Castile and León”, says the researcher.
The study, published in the CED magazine Demographic Perspectives, makes it clear that if geographic isolation and poverty were the causes of the first depopulation of a rural world that was full at the time, the current depopulation takes place in a rural world empty and with little expectation of demographic regeneration. “The romantic idea of ??making people move to the villages will not save the empty Spain; neo-rurals are not useful for re-establishing populations, they rotate: they arrive, make artisanal products and, after a while, that ends; what needs to be defended are the places where there are still people, and action to make them grow”, emphasizes the CED demographer and geographer. And he reiterates that the places where the fight against depopulation must be considered are municipalities with at least 2,000 inhabitants and regional capitals.
