Buy yourself an entire Spanish VILLAGE for £227,000

An entire abandoned Spanish village has gone up for sale for £227,000, the same price as a one-bed apartment in Madrid.

Salto de Castro, found in north-western Spain, has 44 homes, a hotel, a church and a swimming pool – and has been put up for sale by the current owner.

The village is built over 65,000 square feet along the hilltops in the province of Zamora, near Spain’s border with Portugal.

But despite its picturesque location, Salto de Castro is home to no inhabitants, and has been abandoned for more than three decades.

Its current owner, who purchased the village in 2000 from Iberdrola (a renewable energy company), had intended to turn it into a tourist attraction.

However, the eurozone crisis prevented them from being able to afford the costs to transform Salto de Castro into a holiday resort, and it has been left empty ever since.

Now in his 80s, the owner – who has not been identified – wants to see his dream become reality in the hands of a different owner.

Ronnie Rodríguez, who works for Royal Invest – the company representing the owner, told BBC News: ‘The owner had the dream of having a hotel here but it was all put on hold. He would still like the project to come true.’

The village is listed on the Spanish property retail website Idealista. There, the owner says he was never able to afford the up-keep of the settlement. ‘I am selling because I am an urban-dweller and cannot maintain the upkeep,’ he says. 

The retail page has reportedly recieved more than 50,000 views, and has attracted interest from more than 300 parties from Britain, France, Belgium and Russia.

One person, Mr Rodríguez said, has already put down a reserve.

Its current owner, who purchased the village in 2000 from Iberdrola (a renewable energy company), had intended to turn it into a tourist attraction. However, the eurozone crisis prevented them from being able to afford the costs to transform Salto de Castro into a holiday resort, and it has been left empty ever since

In addition to the 44 homes, the prospective new owner would possess a bar, a church, a school with several classrooms, a barracks formerly used by the Civil Guard, sports grounds and a swimming pool – to do with as they please.

Previous attempts to sell the village for vastly more money have failed. The owner attempted to sell it before for around £5.6 million, but no one came forward.

The price has since plummeted, to helped by the fact that several of the buildings have been vandalised since they were abandoned. 

Now, the asking price is sitting at €260,000 (£227,000), which would be enough for a one-bedroom apartment in the likes of Spain’s capital Madrid or Barcelona.

However, the buyer would likely need much more to renovate the village. Idealista says: ‘The investment required in order to make the village 100% workable and to become profitable would not exceed €2m.’

Salto de Castro was originally built by the electricity generation company Iberduero to house workers who constructed the nearby reservoir, from the 1950s.

But once the reservoir was completed, workers moved away from the village. By the 1980s, it was left totally abandoned.

Now, the area around the village is known as ’emptied Spain’ doe it its sparse population and rural areas that lack many services found in other towns and cities.