EVERYTHING THAT GETS LOST IN BETWEEN

by Inés Verheyleweghen

In the streets of Langa de Duero, a Spanish village with a population hovering around 600 people, four men are carrying the renovated statuette of San Isidro, the saint of the farmers. The mass is over, and the procession follows. They go past the pale houses and their flourished balconies. Past some abandoned homes, too. The seventy people gathered don’t look at their feet while walking, but up to the sky. The choir sings and hopes for rain after more than a month of drought. In a land of farmers, God is still preached for a bountiful harvest. The festivities will last all day, but tomorrow the village will go back to its quiet. Visitors from Madrid, Aranda and Soria will return to their cities. But not Juan, Susana, or Pili. They’re living in Langa de Duero, a village that has lost half its population over the past seventy years.

In the fifties in Spain, the mechanization of agriculture led to a rural exodus. A phenomenon still ongoing. A book called La España vacía (The Empty Spain) written by the Spanish journalist Sergio del Molino seven years ago gave resonance to the problem of depopulation in rural areas. Following the release of the book, already existing citizen movements such as Teruel Existe and Soria¡YA! entered politics to defend the rights of the inhabitants of these regions. In 2020, almost 22% of Spanish municipalities suffered from a very serious demographic situation. In Soria, the province where Langa de Duero lies, more than half its municipalities are concerned. Langa de Duero is less affected than other villages but is still in a serious situation.

Pilar Cuerpo Sanz, commonly named Pili, keeps the keys of almost every village’s building. The 83 years-old woman takes care of the hermitage’s rosebushes and plays la brisca at the elderly centre every evening. When she was a teenager, she didn’t get the chance to study. Few men did, let alone women. She could work as a servant in Madrid or Barcelona or stay at home and help her parents. She chose the latter. During all these years, she has seen her village transform. From muddy streets to asphalted ones, she remembers the ladies sewing in the streets, the kids screaming and playing outside, and the houses left open.

El día de las matanzas (Pig Slaughtering Day) was once the happiest day of the year: sometime in January or February her father would kill a pig and the women would gut it and cure the hams. The tradition, due to stricter sanitary rules, is dying away. The cattle raising now happens in industrial farms and the households have no animals anymore, except for chickens.

Driving down the Calle Real to his home, Juan Leon de Blas Ayuso counts the uninhabited houses. From the village council and for the next 300 meters, it’s probably two out of three. Some of them are used during the summer, others keep their old storefront. Back home he swaps his car for his tractor and goes to one of his fields. He owns a hundred hectares of land around the village – twenty of which his father gave him. The 59-year-old man has witnessed two different eras in his life: the work that used to be done in two months can now be achieved in two weeks. When he had to choose his path in life, Juan had figured out one thing: He wanted to stay close to his parents.

Susana Santos de Diego came back to the village three years after leaving it for the very same reason. Her parents are no longer alive, though, but she is still here. For the last thirty years, she’s been slicing steak for the villagers. “I don’t get sad when I think about the depopulation”, says Susana, “I get sad when I look back at what the village used to be.” On Thursdays, the bus would drop off around

30-40 people from the neighbouring villages of the municipality. The butcher’s shop would be packed. The business would live off these customers, too. Now, most of them have passed away or are in elderly homes. “I started noticing the change ten years ago. Yes, there are still people living in the village now, but there’s no village life anymore,” Susana says.

Compared to other villages, Langa de Duero meets the basic needs of its inhabitants. There’s a pharmacy, a medical center, and a 24-hour medical assistance. There are two bars, from the same owner, one small supermarket, a butcher, and a fishery. Parents can bring their children to the nursery, kindergarten, and primary school. The elderly can meet at a community house. Farming, pork farms, vineyards and some factories provide work to the villagers. The bus service is too poor to solely rely on, though. Langa de Duero is an intermediate village trying to keep up. The arrival, since the beginning of the 2000’s, of immigrants from Romania, Bulgaria, and South America to work in the agricultural sector helps mitigate the population loss and keep infrastructures alive. But despite its rather favourable situation and some initiatives implemented by the municipality, the demographic tendency remains the same. Young generations leave to study in the cities and end up finding a job there. The inhabitants are mainly old people, and the birth rate is low.

Pili is joking around at the elderly centre. They used to be thirty women to gather and play cards. Now, they’re maybe ten. If the elderly centre didn’t exist, she wouldn’t mind playing cards at the bar, with the men. Pili would adapt to anything in order not to sink into solitude. For Juan’s father, the situation is different. Since the pandemic, he doesn’t feel like joining the men in the bar anymore. He eats with his son, visits him in the fields or takes care of his vegetable garden. “What scares me the most, that I think we will have to deal with in the future, is the solitude of the elderly”, says Juan. He thinks the village is going to become a “dormitory village” for the people working in Aranda. Or a village that will only be alive during the summers and some weekends.

Susana raised her three daughters in Langa. Two of them have left already, one of them to a bigger village, and the other to the city of Burgos. Laura, who’s 16, is planning to leave for her studies. “Here, you live in a bubble. And I want to see the world. But I think that later I would like to live two lives: one in the city, and one in the village.” Her older sister, Paula, left the village when she was 15. “My sister really struggled. She had only one other girl her age in the village. I was lucky enough to have six. When politicians talk about the “empty Spain” they always focus on the infrastructures and services, on the physical, rarely on mental health. Of course, which politician is interested in having a therapist here? There’s no one.”

From his window, Juan sees the kids playing in the primary school yard during the break. For the farmer, who has no one to pass on his land to, hearing the screams and laughs of the toddlers fills him up with joy. Seeing his dog, Bonnie, run left and right, following the ball behind the school fence, makes him happy too. After the break, the fifth and sixth grade have a business class. With only 33 pupils, the school must mix the different grades to have enough teachers. Part of today’s program is learning how to improve their marketing strategy. Two days earlier, they were selling homemade soap on a market in the provincial capital, along with other kids from other schools. They were the only ones coming from a village 90 kilometres away. Last year, they were disappointed when they realized they hadn’t made any profit. Indeed, the village kids had to pay for their bus journey. Their school principal, Iratxe Baizán Verdejo, had to seek financial help from the deputation. This year, no surprises. The transportation fees were covered.

“The many cultural activities we can’t attend because of the transportation costs, are probably the main disadvantage of a rural school. Our education level is as good as elsewhere. In some ways even better because our teaching is very much personalized”, explains Iratxe. The primary school also receives help from the province and the European union for the development of rural areas. The money is invested in tablets, laptops, and interactive touch-screen boards.

The San Isidro celebration ends with the fanfare playing in the village hall. Behind the hill on which Langa de Duero is built, the sun is setting. The limestone rock formation deprives the villagers of the golden hour. About twenty people are attending the concert. There’s one toddler crawling in the room, and about six old couples dancing. Other villagers are observing or resting after the effort. When the melody of la jota rings out, the audience joins the dancefloor. The villagers are known for playing the traditional song on repeat. They lift their arms, snap their fingers and twirl around, without having to think. Their bodies carry the memory of all the times they have danced it. •