Los pueblos más bonitos de la España vacía

Less than ten years ago, several writers and essayists named and updated a phenomenon so old and common that it almost went unnoticed: far from the sea, the Peninsula was losing its inhabitants. Empty Spain soon went from being an accurate synthesis to a devalued and even vilified topic, because empty led to empty, to underline an intentionality in the fact that fields and towns are being left without inhabitants and without services. In Routes to discover empty Spain (2020), Francesc Ribes proposed 23 itineraries that traveled through the most unpopulated territories, that is, the so-called Celtibéric Mountains (from La Rioja to Valencia) and the Celtic Strip (on the border with Portugal), but he pointed out that 'in almost all the autonomous communities you can find municipalities on the verge of extinction due to lack of people'. Completing this panorama and highlighting those towns full of attractions and besieged by loneliness is the aim of this book. On the roads that lead to them are the landscapes where the history of this country can be read. The towns reviewed in this guide book suffer the threat of depopulation, yes, but not abandonment, because their historical, artistic and natural heritage guarantees them a place in the agendas of well-informed tourists. There are 40 of them and they are spread across almost all the regions - only the Balearic Islands are missing, and not because of a lack of charming towns, but because depopulation is not a problem in the archipelago - but there are many more because other riches would have to be added: the lives of those who live in these towns and the experiences of those who visit them, but those do not fit in a single book.