In the so-called Empty Spain, beyond slogans, they seek solutions. The rural exodus poses problems on a day-to-day basis, such as the fact that there are job offers that remain unfilled because there are no applications or that people who are committed to staying cannot do so due to lack of housing. For this reason, they look at rural Catalonia, where there are many examples of masovería to import it to the Els Ports region through a program to promote housing and employment that is committed to the economic recovery of the area.
In this region, whose capital is the tourist Morella, a jewel in the interior of the Valencian Community, these days they are looking for a person to control access and collect tickets for the Basilica of Morella; and in Vilafranca, a skating reinforcement monitor for some extracurricular classes that start next Tuesday.
Both are offers from the "Reactivem els Ports" web portal, an initiative promoted by the Els Ports Territorial Agreement for employment in which public administrations, companies - there are some 350 in the area -, unions and universities are involved. The team verified that the difficult coverage of job offers was always linked to the lack of housing and that thus the socioeconomic revitalization of the territory was difficult. "Here less than half of the homes are primary residences and 15% of them are always closed. We have housing options but there are no offers, neither for sale nor for rent," says Iván Bueno, coordinator of the "Reactivem els" program Ports".
That is why now that the project has changed from being experimental to being its own entity (it has room to develop until the end of 2024 with public financing) they are working on importing experiences of freeholding from Catalonia. "We have contacted various people to bring people who are doing it there to promote it, and in the process we have even seen that there are those who were already doing it in our region, although they had not given it this name as such," Bueno explains.
Their proposal is similar to the one they develop in the Mancomunidad del Rincón de Ademuz, also in the interior, and where they have created a Housing Bank with information on properties available to live in, in different types of regime: rent, sale and assignment for use. . The website of the Arrel program is inspired by both initiatives, which is promoted by the Department of Housing and which seeks to focus this housing offer on 180 uninhabited localities in the Valencian Community.
Among the offers in Els Ports, on the other hand, it is difficult to find rental proposals for stable stays, because Iván Bueno explains, there is "mistrust towards this type of contract" and, on the other hand, because tourism takes a good part of the cake with seasonal rentals for tourist season.
Likewise, another of the proposals that they are considering to promote in towns such as Cinctorres or Castellfort is the creation of housing cooperatives so that various buyers come together to acquire large homes, expensive to rehabilitate, to later divide the space. The lack of real estate in the area has motivated them to be the ones to promote these ideas in the territory, one of the areas that suffers the most depopulation problems, since in the last 10 years the population has been decreasing year by year. However, the latest figures suggest that they added 82 inhabitants during the year 2021 and as of January 1, 2022 its population stood at 7,066 residents in the 17 municipalities that make it up, according to the INE.
In addition, this has been the second consecutive year in which the population has increased. Specifically, 11 villages increased in number of inhabitants: Morella, which gained 69; La Pobla de Benifassà, which grows 12; Castellfort, Forcall and Todolella, with 11 more each; Herbés and La Mata, cone 10; Cinctorres, which climbs 8; Villores, who wins 7; and Palanques and Olocau del Rey, which increase by 2. On the contrary, there are six populations that lose part of their population.
