Japan, which is currently experiencing a population crisis, is trying to survive amidst the increasingly quiet villages. In Spain, there are real examples that have experienced this. A village is only inhabited by an elderly couple.
In 2018, the Daily Mail wrote about the existence of a husband and wife named Juan Martin and Sinforosa Colomer who were then aged 79 and 82 years, living in a village called La Estrella. It has been more than 45 years that the village has only been inhabited by the two of them.
The place, like other villages, has had a mayor, police, priests, professional teachers, workers in various fields, and ordinary citizens living in it.
After a natural disaster that killed many of its residents, this village has never returned to its former splendor. This loss of rural population has been compounded, by the movement of residents from village to town amid the Civil War, and by modern demography.
Left alone, Martin and Sinforosa till the land and care for dozens of cats and dogs in what was once home to 200 residents.
They raise rabbits and chickens for meat and eggs, and head to a nearby town to buy other food which they cook on traditional stoves.
They lived without electricity and depended on oil lamps and moonlight for 10 years, until they finally had solar panels to provide electricity. La Estrella doesn't even have a telephone line. There is only cellular signal, and even then it is located in a cemetery.
Their story was made into a short documentary detailing the simple but difficult life the elderly couple leads in a remote town.
Martin told the filmmaker that years ago he had intended to leave like the other residents. But his wife grew up in this town, and it was also here that they had a daughter who tragically died at the age of eight.
"My wife was born in this place, she has always lived here. She doesn't want to leave. If it had been up to me, I would have left this town a long time ago. But I can't just leave her here alone," he said.
Martin and Sinforosa have other children who have to go to school outside the city because local teachers and schools in the village have to close because there are fewer students who continue at local schools.
None of the local residents who used to live in La Estrella come back to just reminisce about the past. Although the couple has a house in Villafranca, in a nearby town, they only go there to visit their son and his family.
Martin and Sinforosa were determined to stay there. "Let La Estrella die with us," said Martin.