Buy a whole Spanish village for the price of a city flat

Salto de Castro has 44 houses, a bar, a school, a church and a current population of 0 residents

If your city feels way too dense and traffic noise is getting on your nerves, why not move to rural Spain and get yourself furnished with an entire village? Currently, there is an ad on the country’s main property market website, Idealista, which entices such country-life dreamers with an offer to purchase the village of Salto de Castro for the nifty sum of 260,000 euros!

Located, in the province of Zamora, within the sparsely populated Castille and Leon region, Salto de Castro was built by a local hydro company in order to house employees working on the adjacent dam. The mechanization of work, however, made their jobs redundant and the place was abandoned in 1989.

You can become the lifetime mayor of your own village

So, what would you get if you forked out a quarter of a million euros for the village? The place has 6,000 square meters built and spread over several buildings, including 44 homes, five of which are independent. It also has other facilities such as "a bar, a church, a school" and even an inn with laundry and a dining room with a project to build 14 rooms.

There are also old Civil Guard barracks, a swimming pool and a sports area. In addition, there is a reservoir a few meters away where the buyer could even launch a tourist boat if they wished. And as the ad states, given the abundance of built space, the offer is a steal at only 39 euros per square metre. As for the overall price, with this money, you’d only be able to afford a flat in any major European city these days.

Apparently, Salto de Castro was bought from the hydro company in 2000 by a family who intended to turn it into a tourist spot. However, then the crisis of 2008 happened and put things on the back burner.

The good news is that now we’re living in times of massive interest in subsidizing development on part of regional governments and the European Union. The owners of the property indicate that the person who acquires the town will have access to subsidies from the Spanish Government and from the Region of Castilla y León. 

According to a previous study prepared by the owners, the investment that the town would need to be 100% operational and begin to be profitable would not exceed two million euros.