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On to number two

Thrilled with our first empty village visit we went on to number two. It was about two hours drive and as we had some spare time we stopped at a small nearby village, Poza de la Sal. A small but nice middle aged village. With a tiny square with one bar and a tourist office. I went there and asked Maaike to join so we could ask about the place in Spanish. Luckily the nice guy spoke very well English. So we told him we wanted to build a food forest. He looked really happy and told us he was setti a festival Artim. Which was about regenerative farming and community building around new ways of growing food and taking care of the land.
Besides that he gave us about five phone numbers of Dutch people living in the area which were also living in empty villages and or working with land. 
After that amazing coincidence we drove on to village nr 2. 
 
An older man came by car and started to talk to me, I redirected him to Maaike as I could not speak Spanish, and she could. He said the price was 350.000 fixed, which we knew and was our spending limit. And that it was 76 ruïnes of which he owned 58. Which was much more than the 10 we expected. Nevertheless we were interested. 
He guided us around, he knew a lot about the place as he was already working on it for many years or even decades. He is an architect and had a plan to turn the place into a village with a restaurant, swimming pool, tennis court and parking places. He had a 15 million euro plan to do it. But as he was 76 he could not finish the project, hence the village was for sale.
 
After the tour we again said we were interested but only if it was possible to add about 10 ha of land to it. 
He left leaving us with our thoughts. We soon agreed that although this place was much more expensive this was more in line with our plan. Although we did not need this many ruïnes, the place was on the border of the dry land we wanted to improve and it had a little stream of water. The other villages was in a much greener area with no running water. 
We left dreaming and thinking about the questions we had. Is the streaming running whole year, is the mine which is next to the village a problem, what are we allowed to do with the possible land, will the Mayor be able to work with us and... many more questions. 

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