Salto de Castro: Spanish Village On Sale for €260,000
Desk Report
Published: 12 Nov 2022, 05:17 pm
Located on the border with Portugal in the province of Zamora and a three-hour drive from Madrid, Salto de Castro has many of the buildings you would expect to find in a small Spanish town.
They include 44 homes, a hotel, a church, a school, a municipal swimming pool and even a barracks building that used to house the civil guard.
However, Salto de Castro has been abandoned for more than three decades.
The owner bought the village at the beginning of the 2000s, with the intention of converting it into a tourist spot. However, the eurozone crisis prevented the plan from flourishing.
On the Idealista website on which the property is listed, the owner, who is in his 80s, states that "I am selling because I am an urban-dweller and cannot maintain the upkeep" of the village. It has attracted interest, with more than 50,000 visits since it was listed a week ago at this price.
Salto de Castro was built by the electricity generation company Iberduero to house families of the workers who built the reservoir next door, from the early 1950s. But the inhabitants moved away after its completion and the village was totally abandoned in the late 1980s.
For anyone dreaming of selling up and moving to the country, how about buying an entire village? Salto de Castro, in north-western Spain, is up for sale and the asking price is €260,000 (£227,000; $259,000).