“It’s a utopian fantasy- discover a ghost town and rebuild it in line with your ideals-, but in Spain where there are nearly 3000 abandoned villages (most dating back to the Middle Ages), some big dreamers have spent the past 3 decades doing just that.
There are now a few dozen “ecoaldeas” – ecovillages – in Spain, most built from the ashes of former Medieval towns. One of the first towns to be rediscovered was a tiny hamlet in the mountains of northern Navarra.
Lakabe was rediscovered in 1980 by a group of people living nearby who had lost their goats and “when they found their goats, they found Lakabe”, explains Mauge Cañada, one of the early pioneers in the repopulation of the town.
The new inhabitants were all urbanites with no knowledge of country life so no one expected them to stay long. When they first began to rebuild, there was no road up to the town so horses were used to carry construction materials up the mountain. There was no electricity either so they lived with candles and oil lamps.
Today, the town generates all its own energy with the windmill, solar panels and a water turbine. It also has a wait list of people who’d like to move in, but Mauge says the answer is not for people to join what they have created, but to try to emulate them somewhere else.”
Original story here.
Big compliments to Fair Company.com for their excellent videos. We’ve featured several of their videos so far and I look forward to watching more. This one was so good I watched it twice.
too cool for words.. magic still happens on a darken planet..
That’s one of my favorites.
so appreciate your posts! yes! that others pick up examples of renewed mountain spanish villages, look for the abandoned places everywhere! again, how can we get together all, like those you wrote of, desert homes, now being threatened to destroy? let’s gather together as others are doing this. thanks, jehane, jehanetogo@gmail.com