There was a time when it could be said that the province of Jaén was made up of 97 municipalities within its territorial scope and another one located almost 2,000 kilometers away.
Ceferina Ruiz Moreno, who arrived in Switzerland with her parents when she was barely 14 years old, knows this well: “In Bad Ragaz we went down the street and it seemed that we were in Hinojares, there were more emigrants than natives”.
The first town that Ceferina refers to is in the Swiss Alps and the second, in the Sierra de Cazorla.
Almost 90% of the residents of Hinojares, according to the City Council, have packed their bags at some point in their lives to work in that alpine tourist destination, bordering the town where Heidi's adventures take place
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Now, the City Council points to the return of some of them to retire where they were born as the cause of the sudden rise in population on the eve of 28-M that the National Institute of Statistics has detected and that the Central Electoral Board is investigating.
Hinojares, a town in the Sierra de Jaén, which has seen a lot of migration to Switzerland. José Manuel Pedrosa
It all began in the early sixties of the last century, when a resident of Hinojares undertook a trip to the Swiss town of Bad Ragaz to work in construction.
That man was followed soon after by other relatives and friends and, in just a few years, Hinojares experienced an unprecedented exodus.
Today in this town in the Sierra de Cazorla there are some 400 people registered, according to data from the local government, but only half live there regularly.
The rest are emigrants, some temporary and others long-haul.
Already retired, Ceferina Ruiz has returned to her roots in the company of Marcelino Gómez, another returnee from Hinojara, whom she married in Bad Ragaz.
She worked in the hotel business and he, in a gas station.
“We were very comfortable there and they earned money, but the truth is that life is better here, there is a better quality of life,” says Gómez when comparing both locations.
Like Marcelino and Ceferina, other emigrants who met in Bad Ragaz are returning to Hinojares.
This is the case of Manuel Berbell and María Dolores Coronado, who to enjoy their retirement have purchased a cave-house, one of the main tourist attractions in this town in the Jaén mountain range.
Hinojares Marcelino Gómez and other emigrants from Hinojares in the 1970s
However, more residents continue to leave than return to Hinojares.
The children and grandchildren of the first migrants are now fully settled in the Swiss municipality, with a long tradition as a spa and today a luxury tourist destination, with first-class hotels, thermal baths and golf courses.
There, Noelia Ruiz, the third generation of migrants from Hinojaría, makes her life.
A few years ago she decided to follow in her parents' footsteps to start working in a hotel in Bad Ragaz.
"It's the worst of all, leaving our children there," laments Marceliano Ruiz, who returned to Hinojares last October after 40 years of working in the Swiss Alps.
The negative migratory balance of Hinojares is such that the town has lost almost three quarters of its population since the 1990s.
In 1996 it had 1,300 inhabitants on the census, compared to the current 400, which makes it the smallest municipality in the province of Jaén.
"Yes, it's true, 90% of the population has emigrated in recent decades, mostly to Bad Ragaz," admits the mayor of Hinojares, Marón Martínez, who worked for more than two decades as a truck driver in Switzerland to return to his town eight years ago, the ones he has been as a local alderman.
But unlike the rest of the returned emigrants, Martínez did return with the whole family, including her two children in their twenties and whom it seems difficult for her to keep in the town when they finish their studies.
“I think we have to focus on tourism, we have 200 rural accommodation places and we are in a less exploited mountain range than [the rest of] Cazorla,” says the mayor of Hinojares, trying to find a light at the end of this long migratory tunnel.
The mayor of Hinojares, Marón Martínez, shows some souvenirs from the Swiss town of Bad Ragaz.José Manuel Pedrosa
But what to do to try to reverse this situation?
The mayor assures that he is taking measures to try to stop the population bleeding.
To families that have a child, for example, the City Council gives 500 euros to spend in the town's pharmacy and keep this essential service alive.
In recent years, a dozen babies have been born in Hinojares.
The unemployed, adds the councilor, are offered 15 wages.
Marón Martínez has been wanting to establish a twinning between Hinojares and Bad Ragaz for some time.
“The thing is that it costs a lot of money to organize an expedition there, 2,000 kilometers away, and we have a very low budget, barely 500,000 euros,” he comments.
Both towns have in common that they are mountainous territories, although while the Andalusian municipality bleeds demographically, the famous Swiss town (with just over 6,200 inhabitants) continues to receive Spanish emigrants every year.
The Swiss municipality borders on Maienfeld, which many residents of Hinojar discovered even before the television success of the popular television series
Heidi
.
The author of this book, Johanna Spyri, was inspired by this village to write the story of a little orphan who had to go to the Alps to live with her grandfather, a lonely man.
Now in Hinojares there are also older and older people who walk its lonely streets.