# Empty villages



## bob_bob (Jan 5, 2011)

Abandoned Spanish villages, given away for free - Yahoo Finance UK An interesting article.


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

bob_bob said:


> Abandoned Spanish villages, given away for free - Yahoo Finance UK An interesting article.


Apart from those where the population left in dribs and drabs until there was nobody left, there were clearances ordered both during and after the Civil War. There are areas where Franco ordered the clearance of people and rehousing in modern villages and towns. At first one might think that this was a bit of a cheek but hardly anyone made much fuss about having to leave their old farmhouse with no electricity, no running water, no sewerage, no gas only hard work especially when they were offered a nice new council house with all mod-cons. Now you might think that this was being awfully generous of El Generalisimo but if you look at where the people were living - prime hunting country - and Franco was a hunter. We have this from somebody who was "moved". In some cases a village/hamlet was cleared to break up groups of subversives but often they were not rehoused in anything like as comfortable as were the others - many were just taken to a hidden place and shot, falling into a pit where the bodies were sprinkled with quick-lime and then covered with the soil from the original digging of the pit.


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## Justina (Jan 25, 2013)

Yes, I don't think Franco was ever generous to anyone but his sidekicks, one of which was a mayor of Benidorm who got enormous finance to start building a sleepy village into the place it is today.
Re the villages there was an article about it last year and while it may be agreat idea if you have lots of good friends or a large family who wish to build together and make their own community. But one would have to make sure that some long forgotten cousin doesn't appear and say that was granny's house.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

baldilocks said:


> Apart from those where the population left in dribs and drabs until there was nobody left, there were clearances ordered both during and after the Civil War. There are areas where Franco ordered the clearance of people and rehousing in modern villages and towns. At first one might think that this was a bit of a cheek but hardly anyone made much fuss about having to leave their old farmhouse with no electricity, no running water, no sewerage, no gas only hard work especially when they were offered a nice new council house with all mod-cons. Now you might think that this was being awfully generous of El Generalisimo but if you look at where the people were living - prime hunting country - and Franco was a hunter. We have this from somebody who was "moved". In some cases a village/hamlet was cleared to break up groups of subversives but often they were not rehoused in anything like as comfortable as were the others - many were just taken to a hidden place and shot, falling into a pit where the bodies were sprinkled with quick-lime and then covered with the soil from the original digging of the pit.


Many damns and reservoirs were built in Franco's time too, as mentioned in the article and people were moved on or they left if their village or land was taken over. According to this book
LA ESPAÑA DE FRANCO: Manuel MARTÍN LOBO: Obra señera de Franco: embalses, regadíos, colonización y repoblación forestal
The volume of water stored in reservoirs increased by 9, from 4.000 mill.m3 to 36.628 millones... My husband once told me that it seemed like Franco opened a new reservoir every other week


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

Pesky Wesky said:


> Many damns and reservoirs were built in Franco's time too, as mentioned in the article and people were moved on or they left if their village or land was taken over. According to this book
> LA ESPAÑA DE FRANCO: Manuel MARTÍN LOBO: Obra señera de Franco: embalses, regadíos, colonización y repoblación forestal
> The volume of water stored in reservoirs increased by 9, from 4.000 mill.m3 to 36.628 millones... My husband once told me that it seemed like Franco opened a new reservoir every other week


Yes they did build a large reservoir in the Cazorla Natural Park but dotted all over are empty cortijos (or the remains of) that were cleared for Franco's hunting grounds. One of his old hunting lodges is now the Park's main visitor centre.


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## sara7 (Jan 7, 2011)

Where?
and 
How get?


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

sara7 said:


> Where?
> and
> How get?


For where try reading the article and how get is basically by having money in your pocket. Alternatively try Googling abandoned villages in Spain and you'll get articles and an estate agent's probably - I did!


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