-Good morning!
"Very good, young people!"
Gregorio García and Manuel Hernández are not that young, but their 75 and 66 years are not old age in depopulated Soria either.
When looking at the bar in the municipality of Renieblas (population 109), two glasses of Verdejo appear.
The waitress, Andra Lazar, a 34-year-old Romanian, greets these tavern nomads, since there is no longer a bar in their towns and they migrate to the nearest one for a wine and a chat.
“Calderuela is dead.
Since the bar closed, he has plummeted ”, they lament to the rest of the clientele, who maintain a stronghold of social life between stools and bottles.
Depopulation condemns rural establishments, which need popular involvement to survive.
And political nudges: Teruel Existe has presented in Congress a bill to include these businesses in the Social Economy Law and thus provide them with economic advantages,
fiscal and administrative
The initiative, which would benefit "hotel and restaurant establishments" and "small businesses, including street vendors", that provide their services in towns with less than 200 inhabitants, began its process two weeks ago with the support of the practice entire lower house.
Now the groups must refine the content of the text.
“There is no bar that doesn't come for good”, “I didn't understand that a town without a bar dies until I came four years ago.
What would they do otherwise!” exclaims Lazar, manager of the oasis, between deserted streets and lowered blinds.
The parishioners form a family aware that, without consuming, they will lose this agora.
Teófilo Martín and Rosa de la Nava, 52, celebrate the existence of this “meeting point” where the ladies play the game and which is sustained with coffees, beers or dinners.
Manoli, an 80-year-old sweet tooth, buys 20 ice creams at a time, which she later savors little by little at home, on days when she is out.
The elders saw Sergio Gallardo, 34, grow up there until his family, which ran the bar, retired and gave way to the current command.
"There are people who rarely come, but if it closes they get angry," says the young man.
How they would miss it if that happened, they comment.
The deputy Tomás Guitarte picked up this feeling when exposing the legislative proposal;
He recalled, for example, that in Jabaloyas (Teruel, with about 100 inhabitants) a vote of no confidence dismounted the mayor who had allowed him to close the tavern, and claimed "the basic service" that these places provide in small towns.
Melania Cascante, owner of the Villares bar.Claudio Álvarez
According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 2,485 of the 8,131 municipalities in Spain have less than 200 inhabitants: they represent 30% of the municipalities, but only accommodate 0.5% of the Spanish population (238,026 people, slightly more than the population of Granada capital).
In addition, a 2022 study prepared by the Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services concludes that 0.3% of Spaniards (142,781 people) live in towns without a bar, almost all of them with less than 100 residents.
Half of them, in Castilla y León: Zamora (6%) and Soria (5.13%), which occupy the podium of depopulation, are the provinces with the most people without a bar.
One of the authors of the report, Gustavo García from Soriano, explains that they collected this data by scrutinizing the INE and "searching in each town for photos,
reviews or hours of bars or calling town halls.
Some resist because of their position on the road, weekend or vacation visitors, or because they are located in tourist enclaves;
others, because the municipalities offer housing or help to those who run them.
The regulations that Congress is preparing to approve —modifying a 2011 law— advocates promoting “internal solidarity and with society”, that is, the atmosphere of a small town bar at vermouth time.
These premises would become assimilated to entities such as cooperatives, mutuals or foundations, which enjoy bonuses in Social Security, the single unemployment payment or other economic or administrative incentives.
The hotelier Melania Cascante, 63, does numbers in Villares (Soria, 78 people).
“In winter there are 12 neighbors.
With 12 coffees, how do we hold on?
A village bar does not give”, Cascante sentences, asking for popular and political involvement to preserve the rural environment.
Without the out-of-towners drawn to its award-winning cuisine, it would shut down.
“Do you know how sad it is to see it empty with the bar closed?” she asks, pointing to the town.
Another example: Buitrago, also from Soriano (71 registered).
The bar said goodbye months ago, after the owners did not understand each other with the City Council, and left Rosario de Marrón, 51, an orphan of canes.
At Easter, with the municipality there overwhelmed, he took out some tables from his house and set up some beers to simulate the tavern life: "It's a tricky subject, people want it, but then they don't go!", he says.
Closed bar in the Soria municipality of Buitrago.Claudio Álvarez
The sun warms the walk of Felipe Díaz, 87, through Tera (99 inhabitants), whose bar just closes the day of the visit.
"I don't fail!" boasts the old man in the mechanized wheelchair that transports him.
He and his wife, Inés Romero, 76, have a cortado and a wine or a beer every day — “One for pleasure and another for spending” —.
The women play briscola, they play the gullet, and everyone enjoys the company.
Both in Tera and in neighboring Almarza they comment naturally that many parishioners have died and unbalanced the games.
Law of life and cards.
The berets, caps and gray hair of Juan López, Herminio Martínez, Restituto Vinuesa and Jesús Ruiz, between 63 and 78 years old, rub against each other on the tablecloth of the Almarza bar, where they bet the drink on the throat.
"I don't have brisca!", "Oh, Herminio, with all 40!", or "I don't know who gives,
but it's fatal”, they bellow, before Felipa González, 90, surrounded by her daughters and granddaughter but without letters.
“I like to play with women;
men cheat ”, she explains, and calls for more female presence.
"Give them blood sausage!", She ditch.
She, a brisca master, has gone over to solitaire.
Two neighbors chat in a bar in the Soria town of Renieblas.Claudio Álvarez
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber
