Away from the hustle and bustle of Barcelona, a village has used olive trees to attract digital nomads looking for a quieter lifestyle.
ADVERTISEMENTAs I arrive in Oliete, men are operating hand machines to shake the olive trees that bear the precious fruit. It’s harvest time.
Teams of five people work all day on rough terrain to wrestle olives from 1,500 trees to turn them into a golden liquid.
Olive oil is an unlikely way to save a dying village.
But the residents of Oliete in the remote Teruel region of eastern Spain, about a three-hour drive from Barcelona, came up with the idea of using the village’s ‘liquid gold’ to save the small community from disappearing forever.
In a restaurant in the village I hear an unusual sound of English.
“Property and cost of living here are very reasonable. We come here most of the year and go to Ireland in the summer,” says Mark Rawdon, an Irish ship captain who lives in Oliete for four weeks and then spends a month at sea. His girlfriend Carolina Sema, who is from Venezuela, also found a job in Oliete.
Faced with an aging population and the possibility of the local school closing, the village launched ApadrinaUnOliva.org – or ‘adopt an olive tree’ in Spanish. His aim was to encourage people from all over the world to sponsor one of the olive trees for just €60 a year – or less if you live in Spain due to NGO tax breaks.
The NGO then used the €71,000 raised from these sponsors to turn the cowshed into a smart co-working space in the village to attract digital nomadswith support of €75,000 from national and regional governments and business groups. In this process, 43 new jobs were created.
Newcomers to the village come from somewhere else Spain and far away. Some come for a few weeks, while others stay forever.
The charm of Oliete, perhaps, is its remoteness
This is an agricultural country where people live off the land and raise sheep and pigs.
It’s a world away from sun, sea and sand Spanish Costas. For some, this village is the ‘real Spain’.
Oliete is located in the Rio Martin Cultural Park, where Eurasian griffon vultures, golden eagles and peregrine falcons soar.
Of course, the lifeblood of anyone the village is his children. These ’emigrants’ to Oliete saved the school from closing. When Apadrinaunoliva.org started, there were only three students, and now there are 27, ranging in age from three to 11 years old.
Oliete’s new digital nomads are lured by a slower pace
With a current population of just 249, Oliete has been in dire decline – but the new residents bring hope. In the past year alone, the community gained 19 new members.
Sandra Mairal, 50, is one of the digital nomads who stays in Oliete whenever she can to escape her demanding job in Barcelona working as an event organizer.
ADVERTISEMENT“I just like the slower pace of life. You can just change your chip. I can work together and look over the village, which is always much calmer,” she tells me.
“In Barcelonaif you ask for coffee, you get it right away. If you want the same in Oliete, you have to wait,” adds Mairal.
Teresa Sancho, 31, comes from the nearby village of Ariño, which is famous for its outdoor baths. She found a job in Oliete with Apadrinaunoliva.org which, ten years later, has ‘tree adopters’ from 28 countries.
“There are about 8,000 sponsors,” she says. “They came from all over Europe, Britain and America. Most of them come and visit their trees”.
ADVERTISEMENTEach sponsor can give their tree a name if they want. In return, they receive two liters of olive oil a year and can create a lifelong bond with the village.
A Spanish scheme supports its villages to become havens for digital nomads
The people Oliete attracts are diverse: last year, a group of 18 businesswomen from across Europe spent time working in the village as part of a business scholarship, while an American school brought its students to see firsthand how Oliete tries to attract talent from outside.
And how do all these visitors find out about this welcoming rural center?
Oliete, like 30 other dying villages across the road Spainjoined the ‘Red Nacional de Pueblos’, a national network designed to help small communities attract digital nomads.
ADVERTISEMENTAmong Spain’s 8,131 municipalities, 1,840 are classified as at risk of dying out, according to the Autonomous University of Barcelona, which has studied rural depopulation.
Carlos Blanco, a 42-year-old father of four, moved to the village from Barcelona in 2017 and works in a warehouse taking orders for an olive oil project. When Catalonia declared independence, his aquarium business collapsed after all his orders from Spain were cancelled.
“We moved here and haven’t looked back. It is much calmer, the quality of life is better, and the children are much better off,” he tells me. “If you want a big city, it’s only an hour’s drive away in Zaragoza.”
In the narrow streets of Oliete, whose high walls once protected against invaders, there are no tourist bars and few people speak English. But there is a welcoming attitude – the community is really open to newcomers from anywhere.
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