Spanish views from a small town

Have you got fifty-two thousand euros lying around? Buy yourself a village. You might have to spend a bit more on reforms, though, since a tree is growing through a wall of the largest house. Two hundred forty eight thousand will get you five water mills (four restored), a main house of 700 square meters, two rivers, and 24,000 square meters of woods. All this only nineteen minutes from the city of A Coruña, beaches, and golf course.* If you don't feel like getting into a fixer-upper, you could spend three hundred eighty-five thousand on a beautiful fortress-palace from the eleventh century, fully furnished, the house consisting of two floors, 250 square meters each, and a meadow that measures 23,000 square meters surrounding the entire house. It's a little bit far from the major cities, though, just outside the town of Lalín, at 47 kilometers from Ourense and 63 from Santiago. It's a steal; it's list price was originally €785,000.* It's the truth of a problem t...

Our region has had a problem with the birth rate for around thirty years. From around fourteen percent at the end of the seventies, it's gone down to around seven percent. Ever since birth control was legalized, people have been deciding how many children to have according to their beliefs and economic panoramas. Many young people have also emigrated, to other parts of Spain or abroad. One room schoolhouses that used to impart learning to over fifty kids, have been closed because there are less than five children in their circumscription. In fact, Spain as a country has a problem. For the first time, this year there have been more deaths than births.  The government has tried to put patches on a real problem. From spending money on billboards exhorting women to contribute to the population, to little measures that aren't enough on their own. Or that have five truckloads of red tape. The latest from the Galician Consellería de Política Social is a credit card with a hundred m...