The average house price in the UK is a shade over £280,000. But one couple managed to buy an entire village in Spain for slightly less than that. Elvira Fafián, head of specialist estate agents Aldeas Abandonadas Real, explained: “They contacted us because they were looking for something big like this, with lots of houses and land, far from the big cities.”
The one, relatively big catch, was the village was completely abandoned with the buildings crumbling down.
Dutch couple Maaike Geurts and Tibor Strausz plan to turn the abandoned village with 62 homes, which cost them €350,000 (£288k) in 2022, into an eco-community.
They hope to welcome more families to join them as their project progresses, and have this week announced that the first four families are on their way.
The couple have been working hard to rebuild the dilapidated buildings of Bárcena de Bureba, but their main home is still in Amsterdam, as they have yet to make the village fully habitable and self-sufficient.
Maaike, 46, told El Periódico de España: “We recently had a meeting in Amsterdam with four families interested in coming and two have told us that they are sure to come in 2025.”
There’s a long way to go. When Maaike and Tibor arrived, the houses had been stripped down to the bare bones by vandals – even the window frames had been taken.
The two of them, together with their two daughters, Trisa and Riva, aged nine and seven, have been spending long periods in the village, where they have started to fix up the houses and have installed solar panels, as the village has neither electricity nor running water. Bárcena de Bureba has stood empty since the 1970s.
But the couple are determined to rebuild the run-down village into a self-sustaining eco-friendly community. They said: “We want to inspire people. We believe it is a solution to the problems we have now with the soil; it is depleted because there are no organic materials and all the carbon dioxide in the soil is disappearing. That’s why the soil retains less water, which causes drought.”
One of the elements of Bárcena de Bureba that most attracts the attention of prospective new villagers is the Romanesque church.
While it’s currently in a state of semi-ruin, there’ hope that it can be rebuilt: “Many people in Holland are interested in rebuilding it, but I don’t know if it will be possible; maybe it can be a centre for young people, for the elderly,” says Maaikee.
Aldeas Abandonadas has around 40 other villages and hamlets across Spain for sale on its website, many of them in the Galicia region.
