In the first week of February, 116 applications arrived from across Spain, the EFE news agency reported.
The figure has since grown into the thousands as the story spread to outlets in Germany, France and beyond, according to El Heraldo de Soria.
Most applications have come from Latin American families in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina and Mexico, along with European citizens, Mayor Sonia Tobaruela told the local newspaper. Some candidates have even shown up in the village unannounced.
Tobaruela has been frank about the realities awaiting anyone who relocates. Winters are harsh, services are scarce, and running the village bar alone would not cover a salary, which is why a municipal mason’s position is bundled into the offer, she told Cadena SER Soria.
“A lot of people look at it online, but it’s not the same thing,” she said, warning that similar schemes elsewhere in Soria have failed when families underestimated rural life.
Aerial view of Arenillas village in Spain. Photo courtesy of arenillas.es
Arenillas lies 126 km from Madrid, about a two-hour drive, in a sparsely populated stretch of interior Spain known as “emptied Spain.” The village had more than 300 residents in the 1950s before emigration to cities hollowed it out. Today just 40 people live there year-round, although the population swells back to around 300 in summer when former residents return for August festivities. Those include the Boina Fest, a music festival against depopulation founded in 2015 and scheduled for Aug. 8 this year, according to the festival’s organizers.
For most of the year, Arenillas sits quietly with shuttered homes. The 30-sq.km municipality has no shops or restaurants, and the nearest school is 20 km away in Berlanga de Duero. Residents rely on a baker and a fruit seller who drive in periodically for fresh provisions, Tobaruela told El Heraldo de Soria.
To revive the community, the town council and the Arenillas Sociocultural Association have renovated seven municipal homes over the past several years. One is earmarked rent-free for the family selected under the current program, Infobae reported, while the other six are rented out as social housing. The scheme prioritizes households with school-age children.
Selected families receive fully renovated housing at no rent, paying only personal living expenses. The long-term mason position covers maintenance of municipal buildings, filling what the council describes as a structural rural infrastructure need. Management of the village bar, the social heart of the community, is encouraged but not required.
The regional government of Castilla y León covers the full cost of school transport to Berlanga de Duero, removing one of the main practical concerns for families with children. The village also has high-speed internet to support remote work.
Arenillas has been recognized for its anti-depopulation efforts since the 1980s, when residents paved the village’s streets through volunteer labor, earning the National Community Development Prize in 1991. Thanks to those decades of work, its population has remained roughly stable and its birth rate now runs about three times the provincial average, the Boina Fest organization said.
