These small towns in Catalonia are looking for new inhabitants. You dare?
One of the main problems facing Spain in the 21st century is the depopulation . The exodus from the rural to the industrialized world comes from afar, since the third half of the 20th century, but it has been especially agonizing in the last decade. Now many peoples look for a way out in new technologies and in those who, tired of so much asphalt, want a change of life. Are you one of them?
Currently in** Catalonia there are 336 micro-villages**, which represent 35% of the territory and 35% of the municipalities, but in which only 2% of the population lives , according to INE data.
A platform, called GISASH (Geographical Information System for Active and Sustainable Microvillages), launched by three departments (DdG, LIGIT and ICTA) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Association of Small Towns of Catalonia , aims to end the isolation of towns with less than 500 inhabitants and set a precedent of what can be a digital database system for the whole of Europe.
Selva de Mar on the Costa Brava is one of the small towns that can be found on the map.
How does it work? The tool is a digital map in which these small municipalities can be located by region, currently 25 of them are recognized, 20% of the micro-villages of the entire territory.
“The experience in previous projects has shown us that the installation of people in microvillages can fail due to lack of information about the available resources, lack of work or the isolation of the village. In the case of mountain towns, much more when we talk about the cold in winter and the loneliness. But it can also happen that people who come from outside integrate very well because they know the type of life and work that the town offers. In both the one case and the other, having clear and visual information can promote success in such an important life project ", explains Ricard Morén Alegret, professor in the Department of Geography at the UAB, associate researcher at the ICTA and principal investigator of the Hamlets project, on which GISASH has been inspired.
A map to find the ideal town for you.
Therefore,** this map offers a file for each municipality with all the information** that a person who wants to live in it may need. Important services, such as schools, hospitals, work you can do, type of housing available, if you have a library, a public swimming pool or pharmacies, or if you are carrying out social or environmental projects, for example.
It also integrates four public statistical databases : of IDESCAT , which facilitates access to data on population and migration, economy and work, society and culture or habitat and environment; INE , with population data and its evolution between 2006 and 2016, also from the EUROSTAT , with data on the population in Europe (1961-2011), since the line of research in which this project is framed wants to have a future applicability at European level and already includes for this purpose parts of the south of France and the region border of the island of Ireland.
And also the ** CORINE Land Cover **, of the European Environment Agency (EEA), which provides information on land use (agricultural, forestry, urban, etc.) and its evolution over time (1990 - 2012).
"Day by day there is no similar platform of public and free access for the study and management of microvillages in Europe. The technology is already created. Now it is about increasing the participating municipalities and expanding the information in the databases step by step", highlight Miguel Ángel Vargas and Ignacio Ferrero, director and technical manager of LIGIT, respectively.