There is a rather inexplicable tendency to approach the rural as opposed to the urban. An error, since one is not without the other; in the same way that the urban space was originally rural. For not going into what the rural represents for the urban and vice versa.
The same is transferred to the way in which many of the people who inhabit our towns consider those who temporarily or permanently end up settling in this environment. The casuistry can be the most varied. There are those who have the town as a weekend refuge, since work commitments force them to spend most of the week in the city. Some, thanks to teleworking, retirement from work, or others, manage to return to town temporarily or permanently. Others are simply occasional visitors, when the calendar grants us a few holidays in a row, or during the summer period. In any of these cases, they will never be considered “one of us” by the natives of the place, but something like visitors, foreigners or vacationers, depending on the commitment and permanence. Even having probably gone to school in the same town and not having returned to live permanently in it for study and work reasons, but doing so occasionally. It may be what is known as heterophobia, or fear of the other, a reminiscence of a form of tribal, atavistic organization.
Demographic depopulation and territorial depopulation is not a thing of four days ago. The exoduses from the countryside to the city date back many decades, although they intensified after the 1936-39 War and in the 1960s and 1970s, without ceasing to occur. A quarter of the 542 towns in the Valencian autonomous territory have been losing population continuously in recent decades, particularly in inland and mountain regions.
Recently, the autonomous courts have approved the Comprehensive Law on Measures against Depopulation in the Valencian Community. The architecture of the law seems, a priori, impeccable. The 42 articles that make it up articulate a whole series of lines of action to face the challenges posed by this phenomenon. Although it will be necessary to see how these challenges are substantiated in the budgets. But beyond the regulatory frameworks, there are other aspects that should be addressed and overcome as soon as possible.
To begin with, one should stop looking askance at one town and another, the result of the ancestral mistrust that still survives in many cases, and not try to demand the same thing as the one next door, as capricious creatures do. Starting with the mayors and mayors and continuing with each and every one of the residents. The rivalries between neighboring towns may have made sense when leisure was not on offer today. It may even be that in some cases they are so funny as to reflect them in an advertising spot or in a television program. But now the oven is not for buns. The abandonment of the rural environment, the loss of population, advances at a forced march. In general, and with few exceptions, things are looking so bad for rural areas that either these types of approaches are overcome and joint action is taken, or little can be done to reverse this situation. Because the solutions, and the transformations, cannot be exclusive, quite the contrary. Either everyone goes to one or good-bye. What is worth, also, for electoral candidates.
It is very good that there are European, state, regional and regional resources to fight against the abandonment of rural areas, that there are plans, measures and proposals for action, that positions are even created, be they state commissioners or regional secretariats of territorial cohesion and policies against depopulation. But it will be necessary to start by changing the attitude, sometimes excessively suspicious of those who come from outside, even if they are from the next town. As it will be necessary to ask the citizens of the cities to commit themselves to the rural environment. Without going any further, in the areas where large fires have recently occurred (Vall de Gallinera, Alto Palancia or Alto Mijares) citizen platforms have begun to organize themselves to carry out initiatives dedicated to the recovery and promotion of the affected areas. If joint action is not taken and atavistic misgivings are overcome, and if the citizenry as a whole ignores the future of these areas, where the rivers that flow into the coast come from and where the carbon dioxide generated in the urban and industrial environment, among other things, we will all suffer the consequences. If this is not done, the resources will end up destined for the coast, one of the locomotives of the economy and employment. It’s about addition, lowercase. Don’t get me wrong.
