The strange case of the Spanish people saved by the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread out-migration from cities around the world and of those who could afford to escape city life often in favor of the isolation that small towns offer. At that time it was considered a death sentence for these towns, But his loss was, in a few selected cases, exactly what these bourgeois and rural villages needed to survive.

This feeling, according to a new report from The New York Times, was especially true for Gósol, a small town in the Spanish Pyrenees, near Andorra, which has managed to have among its notable tenants Pablo Picasso, who arrived 1906 when the population was roughly 745 inhabitants. The artist painted much of his famous “rose period” there, drawing inspiration from what he defined as an “epiphany of inspiration”. However, the epiphany was not enough for him: he left Gósol before the end of that year, along with many others in the decades that followed.

Since, the census from the city it had diminished in almost every respect. The school was about to close due to a shortage of students. The mayor even visited the television programs and pleaded with his compatriots: “Come to Gósol or the city will disappear ”. It seems, It took a pandemic for the Spaniards to respond to his call. With the onset of the pandemic, many Barcelonans have started to look outside, largely because of the economic crisis that Spain had fallen into, a byproduct of COVID-19. Yes, Gradually, people began to migrate to Gósol in search of a calmer life.

It was a rare ray of light in the midst of turbulent times: about 20 or 30 people moved to a declining city of 140 souls, or even the little school located on the town square i have a second chance when parents started registering their children. Now, has 16 students, a place with chairs and tables for the kids, paper planets hanging from the ceiling, and an incubator that warms the eggs. As the arrivals of adults seemed to start again in Gósol, they said: the children seemed a bit obsessed with the life they left behind.

“There is a girl, there are two or three, who have become much more closed, who have more difficulty relating to others,” he said in dialogue with The New York Times Carla Directives, the director. “It’s like these months they got used to being alone ”, replied to the American newspaper Anna Boixader, a teacher.

“Without the coronavirus, the school would have been closed”, Tenuous Josep Tomás Puig, 67 years old, retired postman from Gósol who spent his life watching the younger generation leave for the cities of Spain. “If the school closes, the city closes.”

Although it owns an impressive historical and natural heritage, the municipality of the Berguedà region is not the favorite of the inhabitants. Only three families moved to Gósol in the years leading up to the pandemic. Last year, a winter storm left the city without electricity, and many without heating, for two days. Two of the three families who volunteered to move ended up leaving.

Gósol they are not the first inhabitants of the country to be on the verge of this situation. For decades in Spain, a landscape full of walled towns, stone bridges and ancient winding roads was abandoned as generations of young people set out for the cities. The “Empty Spain” is the expression that was coined to describe this problem. is population movement from cities to cities has for years caused the depopulation of large regions of the peninsula with densities that rival in the European ranking with Lapland and Norway.

Experts and some new residents remain skeptical about whether the moves will be permanent or not, but For now, Gósol will live to see another day: a small victory in an otherwise heartbreaking year, but a victory nonetheless.

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