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Rural Village in Spain Is Welcoming Digital Nomads with Open Arms

109 points by simonebrunozzi 2mo ago

axiologist 2mo ago
https://archive.ph/dBLoY https://archive.ph/dBLoY
NoboruWataya 2mo ago
As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins. Maybe in particular circumstances it can work, like if the locals actually get most or all of the money spent by the newcomers (rather than going into the pockets of absentee landlords or large corporations). The article opens by noting fears about Spain's "vibrant culture" dying out. Needless to say, this won't help with that problem and may well accelerate it, unless Spanish culture is coding workshops and padel (per the article).
- dmix 2mo ago
  > when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins It's also more socially acceptable to complain about this stuff when the newcomers are seen as wealthy. We saw this in Canada when Chinese nationals started buying up houses in Canada. To the point the government started limiting foreign ownership of residential real estate. https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-research/consultations/prohibition-purchase-residential-property-non-canadians-act https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-da...
  - nonethewiser 2mo ago
    Complain about what stuff? Isnt he saying the complaints are specifically that they are wealthy?
  - accidc 2mo ago
    In Canada , it wasn’t limited to areas with economic struggles/lack of investment. Most of the investment was in major metropolitan cities, leading to a statistically significant percentage of residential housing stock being bought up with foreign(imported) capital. Many of these units were subsequently used as store of investment (left empty) Since policies did not support building at the pace that met increased demand(mainly immigration), and many foreign buyers were comfortable bidding up housing: this was a significant contributor to housing prices inflating to mutiples that were much higher than previous trends (i.e. upto 20 times median salary vs 5/7 times previously) And the foreign buyer ban did lead to a measureable decline in prices Anyway,
    - throw0101a 2mo ago
      See also money laundering through Canada: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing
  - smcin 2mo ago
    The primary thing cornering Canadian real-estate was investor corporations, rather than Chinese nationals. But it was easier politics to highlight Chinese nationals, esp. coming up to the Canadian election.
- Lucasoato 2mo ago
  > As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins. I don’t see it like this, it may as well be that digital nomads are bringing much needed cashflow to the local community; of course this phenomenon should be monitored but digital nomads are so few that they can’t have a meaningful impact in sectors like housing or good prices.
  - Avicebron 2mo ago
    It matters more than you think when it's a rural area with limited housing supply...
    - benoau 2mo ago
      And the nomad visa is not so cheap, by yourself it requires €2850/month which I believe is a LOT more than rural workers are earning, this is exactly how people get squeezed out of housing.
      - adriand 2mo ago
        > it requires €2850/month Holy crap that’s a lot of money. That’s just for the privilege of living and working there? Or do you get citizenship benefits like healthcare etc? And what about taxes?
        c0nducktr 2mo ago
        I believe that's an income requirement, not a fee.
        retired 2mo ago
        Healthcare in Spain is tied to citizenship or employment. If you are employed within Spain you will get healthcare included.
  - alemanek 2mo ago
- cactusplant7374 2mo ago
  In Cuenca, EC you have a lot of retirees and a few digital nomads. Most people don’t make a big move to spend more money than they would in their home country. So they frequent all of the same small local businesses and markets as the locals. No one learns Spanish so some money funnels into interpreters and facilitators. I ended up spending a lot of money on restaurants started by immigrants because I don’t like Ecuadorian cuisine that much. All of this to say that the money is distributed more than one might think.
- arjie 2mo ago
  Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace.
  - andsoitis 2mo ago
    > Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace The point GP was making is that digital nomads are generally in a particular place only temporarily not permanently. So, feelings towards nomads is not the same as feelings towards immigrants. The latter are building community. The former simply feeds off of it.
    - spwa4 2mo ago
      Most actual immigrants are nomads, at least where I live (Western Europe), they are "passing through". They do not intend to settle permanently. Which most governments love, by the way, yes to income taxes, no to pensions later. The only reason they stay is if they have no choice for some reason (e.g. Ukrainians or Russians fearing that if they go back will be sent to the front. Lots of those in the past 2 years). Issue is that a lot of them never intended to stay (and so didn't even bother to keep their visas up to date, so now the government must either) Is it sustainable? No. Not for the governments receiving these people. Because there's still less people to take over everything from political jobs to apartments in a system that is critically dependent on constant growth. Is it sustainable for the immigrants? No, for them it doesn't work either. The cost is no pensions later, and the issue with that is that to have a decent income to survive on, they'll need to save about a million euros per head (4% on that matches a local's "good" pension). And yes, everybody makes financial projections as if this is not the case. Why? Doing it like that means more money to spend right now ... and for now creditors (ie. the central bank) accepts the reasoning. And the truth is, we're nowhere near the point where this system must crash. 10 or so more years, and double that in the big cities.
- Aurornis 2mo ago
  > (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that Most of the people in their digital nomad groups were actually not full-time employed. They were trying to do contract work and then stretching out their earnings between jobs so they could travel. Living in these cheap locations was almost required to allow them to work the way they wanted. There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle. It reminded me of how much the indie hacker scene all fantasizes about being like the levels.io guy making crazy money selling simple services to his giant follower list, but most of them can barely get a couple dozen sales for their SaaS if they’re lucky. Everyone thinks of levels.io, but few people think of the long tail of people making less than they’d get at any full time job.
  - throwaway13337 2mo ago
    I was just the sort you’re talking about. I did contract work so I could stay traveling and lived on money I made in previous full time jobs. It was a very nice way to live compared to the 9 to 5 even though I made less money. Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun. But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life. Cynicism will keep you in your 9 to 5.
    - maest 2mo ago
      [flagged]
      - throwaway13337 2mo ago
        I guess my implied advice is to live the way you want even if it means making less money than you could? Yeah. I’ll own that. Believe it or not, you're on a website where a lot of the readers build stuff. And quite a few find success.
- anonzzzies 2mo ago
  It worked in my village, at least for the local who want to work with the incoming nomads; they all need things done and for them up to 10x the local cost is still cheap, so here the locals are thriving. And now everything looks/works better.
  - jruz 2mo ago
    yes this works for a while till it grows and locals start to compete with the nomads and get priced out and have to move to the outskirts of their town. I’ve seen it happen in Spain, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bali etc.
    - anonzzzies 2mo ago
      I guess this place is just too small; this is more the type of place the article talks about ; this was dead a little while ago, but there are no outskirts and the locals own most nice builds and do airbnbs in them. It's too small to get this type of 'push out the locals' to be happening unless the locals just sell everything, but they are here with their kids etc as well. I can see that it would and does happen in bigger towns. You cannot build here either; nature reserve... You can only restore.
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  From the native point of view of one of such countries, Portugal, the problem is a problem of scale. When it is a couple of folks, bring life again to the village, small town, all good. Now when then it gets daily YT shorts, and TikTok videos, of how great the life is, and how "cheap" everything happens to be, while the locals pay through the nose for basic stuff. No the taxi ride, the restaurant bill, the supermart car filled all the way to the top isn't cheap when one is barely touching over 1000 euros after taxes, on average. So when it gets too much, the locals no longer find it as advantageous as they originally thought, and then votes into right wing parties rise, even from elderly folk that should have known better from dictatorships that ended in the 1970's. Naturally not everyone is like that, and many do integrate into local culture, and even do have videos calling out such behaviours from fellow nomads.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    But I don't get it. When push comes to shove, wealth is debt. Concentration of wealth is directly related, indirectly caused, by debt. Debt is what investors are willing to put in. The bigger the economic union they live in, the more debt investors will be willing to put up with. This leads to wealth concentrating over time, and the more concentrated wealth will be, the poorer these rural villages will be, and everybody runs. They chose policies to go deeper into debt, to join a bigger union to go deeper into debt. I mean, how is this not what they wanted?
    - pjmlp 2mo ago
      Because without the union, you would still take at least 6 hours drive from Porto to Evora, using national roads, preferably during the night unless you wanted to cook between 30 and 40 degrees celsius as I did so many times during may childhood in late 70's, early 80's, instead of the cosy 4h something from taking the motorway. That debt is what allowed many of the infrastructure that is now in place. However it is also the consequence of that debt, that only the middle to low level classes get to experience, that now puts all right wing parties on leading votes, even thought most Boomers and Gen Xers across Europe, should know better how living under dictatorships feels like.
- tgv 2mo ago
  > attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial That depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? In crowded areas, it automatically leads to competition, but these villages are empty. Having a few remote workers there is only going to help essential services. But if you think that not everybody will see it that way, you may be right. > this won't help with [Spain's "vibrant culture"] That is true. Even the idea that small villages form Spain's vibrant culture is a bit of an overstatement.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    > Having a few remote workers there is only going to help essential services ... It will delay the inevitable, if that's what you mean. Not by much. The whole point of being "nomad" is to leave quickly as well.
    - swiftcoder 2mo ago
      > The whole point of being "nomad" is to leave quickly as well. There are certainly a crowd of (mostly young, or early-retired) digital nomads for whom the mobility is a big priority, but as time goes by a hell of a lot of them turn out to be looking for somewhere to set down roots. Here in Spain we see a pretty steady pipeline of digital nomad -> rural homeowner
- nephihaha 2mo ago
  Many of them won't care about Spanish culture or care about the locals. I agree with your assessment.
ks2048 2mo ago
The town: Benarrabá, Málaga province, Andalusia.
- retired 2mo ago
  Which is an hours drive through twisty mountain roads to anywhere. No public transport. Why would a digital nomad live there, when for just a little bit more you can have a walkable town with public transport? Isn’t that where all the Americans are flooding Europe for?
xyzelement 2mo ago
Whether digital nomads contribute economically to local villages is a fine question. But - what is happening to Spain? It has among the lowest fertility in Europe and has only avoided collapse in population through migration form LATAM and North Africa. Why is spain suffering from this? What's happening in the villages is a symptom of something larger.
- ronnier 2mo ago
  It’s happening not just in Spain but across most of Europe, the USA, and East Asia. But lots of Europe and the USA have immigration to offset the population decline. China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, are in dramatic population declines. Even India has stared to level off and expected to decline.
  - xyzelement 2mo ago
    Do you think the causes are the same across the regions?
    - ronnier 2mo ago
      Yes.
    - jdw64 2mo ago
      I think it's the same issue—wealth inequality. I believe this single issue can explain all of modern society's problems
      - grumbelbart2 2mo ago
        I find that unlikely, as it happens in countries with somewhat balanced wealth as well (and countries with the highest fertility rates have the highest wealth imbalance).
        jdw64 2mo ago
        [dead]
amarant 2mo ago
I think if the right to work from home was encoded in law for any job which was practically possible to do remotely, you'd have a better shot at keeping rural villages alive without relying on foreigners. That would keep the local culture living instead of replacing it. But this is better than nothing I suppose, at least it prevents ghost towns
- nightpool 1mo ago
  How do you define a job "practically possible to do remotely"? It is not practically possible to attend in-person daily meetings remotely. While replacing in-person meetings with Zoom meetings is a choice many companies can and have made, I don't think anyone is saying that they're the exact same thing. If your job requires attending meetings to work on a team (and given that almost every job contains an aspect of teamwork), I don't see a clear way for the government to define when having in-person meetings are "required" for better team coordination. I certainly wouldn't want it to regulate by fiat whether zoom meetings were a required replacement for in-person meetings--that would be the same as the government defining Pi as 3.2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill)
fleroviumna 2mo ago
[dead]
lifestyleguru 2mo ago
Like... whom? Zuck or Larry? They're 10 years late to the party, digital nomads are no more. They can count on German and British pensioners, although personally I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics.
- simonebrunozzi 2mo ago
  > I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics. What's wrong with pensioners?
  - lifestyleguru 2mo ago
    They left their multiple real estate back home so your kids can emigrate there and rent it, but your kids will have to work hard actually and unfortunately. On the bright side once your kids come back from emigration, they can in turn start catering to them.
  - simianwords 2mo ago
    - poorer generally - don't add economic value - more health care expenses
    - johnnudd 1mo ago
      The British and German governments pay for the healthcare of their pensioners living in Spain via intergovernmental reimbursement agreements so the healthcare expense to Spain is in fact zero. They also provide a significant economic net benefit to Spain by injecting billions in "imported wealth" through real estate taxes, year-round consumption, and foreign-funded pensions.
      - lifestyleguru 1mo ago
        You mean EHIC card? It's only for medical emergencies, then UK freewillingly left the EU.
- herbst 2mo ago
bluecalm 2mo ago
I have spent quite a bit of time in Andalusia and other poor Spanish regions. A lot of those towns are empty and have mainly older people left. Young ones do anything they can do go to a bigger city looking for opportunities. Some of them serve as retiree/vacation spot for mainly Spanish people from wealthier regions. They are ghost towns during the winter (when digital nomads want to come). In more touristy but still poor regions (like Tenerife) the official argument for anti-tourist policies is that most of the surplus economic value is captured by property owners while causing strain on infrastructure and making life more expensive for the locals. To me the obvious solution is to raise property/land value taxes and use the money to develop infrastructure and lower taxes for local working population. This way the incentives are aligned for everyone. The problem is politics is captured by property owners so it's easier to make villain out tourists/nomads to redirect anger of the locals while continuing like normal for as long as possible. Nomads are a group that doesn't drain welfare resources, pay for themselves and don't cause crime. They don't even take "your jobs" - they may even create some if enough of them come. If your policy is against them you truly lost it in my view.
- lifestyleguru 2mo ago
  It will always boil down to real estate ownership, squeezing and extracting the last available cash with rents. The taxation has to proactively prevent it. Once you allow non-residents to purchase, even if they have local passport, the prices go instantly to the moon.
  - bluecalm 2mo ago
    It wouldn't be a problem if the tax burden was on property owners. If someone purchasing 500k EUR apartment had to pay even 2% of real value of it every year to local community they would be welcome with open arms. Unfortunately right now it's not the locals nor the local infrastructure that capture the benefits. If Spain (and most of the EU) had saner regulations then who knows, maybe they would even allow for building more in places people want to spend time in.
    - vladvasiliu 1mo ago
intothemild 2mo ago
It's always interesting watching counties try to lift the birthrate, and doing things that don't actually help improve the conditions that lead to the issue in the first place. Look here's an idea. If you're under a certain age, and you want to own a home and move to a small village etc.. you are granted 100% protection from the government from your employer and you can work 100% remote. Enshrined into law. Nothing the employer can do about it. Make it a whole nationalism thing to get the right wing on board. I know a whole bunch of people who would move to a country town in a heartbeat if they could, heck lots of people did it during the pandemic, the minute that remote work became a possibility. It's great they're chasing these digital nomads, but I'm not sure that's the solution that's going to work long or even medium term.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
wolvesechoes 2mo ago
With digital nomads is like with standard, recreational tourism. It is always promised by local decision-makers it will bring multiple benefits to locals, including economic boost, but it always a pact with a Devil where few reap rewards while rest are left impoverished, delegated to toilet cleaning and food serving, and local customs and culture are eroded.
- Ekaros 1mo ago
  And with likes AirBnB lead to increasing property values thus increasing rents thus taking even larger share of the income of those workers. Or entirely forcing them to be displaced. For little gain to them.
archiesun 1mo ago
[flagged]

109 points by simonebrunozzi 2mo ago

https://archive.ph/dBLoY https://archive.ph/dBLoY

As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins. Maybe in particular circumstances it can work, like if the locals actually get most or all of the money spent by the newcomers (rather than going into the pockets of absentee landlords or large corporations). The article opens by noting fears about Spain's "vibrant culture" dying out. Needless to say, this won't help with that problem and may well accelerate it, unless Spanish culture is coding workshops and padel (per the article).

dmix 2mo ago
> when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins It's also more socially acceptable to complain about this stuff when the newcomers are seen as wealthy. We saw this in Canada when Chinese nationals started buying up houses in Canada. To the point the government started limiting foreign ownership of residential real estate. https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-research/consultations/prohibition-purchase-residential-property-non-canadians-act https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-da...
- nonethewiser 2mo ago
  Complain about what stuff? Isnt he saying the complaints are specifically that they are wealthy?
- accidc 2mo ago
  In Canada , it wasn’t limited to areas with economic struggles/lack of investment. Most of the investment was in major metropolitan cities, leading to a statistically significant percentage of residential housing stock being bought up with foreign(imported) capital. Many of these units were subsequently used as store of investment (left empty) Since policies did not support building at the pace that met increased demand(mainly immigration), and many foreign buyers were comfortable bidding up housing: this was a significant contributor to housing prices inflating to mutiples that were much higher than previous trends (i.e. upto 20 times median salary vs 5/7 times previously) And the foreign buyer ban did lead to a measureable decline in prices Anyway,
  - throw0101a 2mo ago
    See also money laundering through Canada: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing
- smcin 2mo ago
  The primary thing cornering Canadian real-estate was investor corporations, rather than Chinese nationals. But it was easier politics to highlight Chinese nationals, esp. coming up to the Canadian election.
Lucasoato 2mo ago
> As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins. I don’t see it like this, it may as well be that digital nomads are bringing much needed cashflow to the local community; of course this phenomenon should be monitored but digital nomads are so few that they can’t have a meaningful impact in sectors like housing or good prices.
- Avicebron 2mo ago
  It matters more than you think when it's a rural area with limited housing supply...
  - benoau 2mo ago
    And the nomad visa is not so cheap, by yourself it requires €2850/month which I believe is a LOT more than rural workers are earning, this is exactly how people get squeezed out of housing.
    - adriand 2mo ago
      > it requires €2850/month Holy crap that’s a lot of money. That’s just for the privilege of living and working there? Or do you get citizenship benefits like healthcare etc? And what about taxes?
      - c0nducktr 2mo ago
        I believe that's an income requirement, not a fee.
      - retired 2mo ago
        Healthcare in Spain is tied to citizenship or employment. If you are employed within Spain you will get healthcare included.
- alemanek 2mo ago
cactusplant7374 2mo ago
In Cuenca, EC you have a lot of retirees and a few digital nomads. Most people don’t make a big move to spend more money than they would in their home country. So they frequent all of the same small local businesses and markets as the locals. No one learns Spanish so some money funnels into interpreters and facilitators. I ended up spending a lot of money on restaurants started by immigrants because I don’t like Ecuadorian cuisine that much. All of this to say that the money is distributed more than one might think.
arjie 2mo ago
Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace.
- andsoitis 2mo ago
  > Yeah, Build The Wall rhetoric is pretty popular worldwide. While most associated with Trump, it’s a general view that people demand their neighbours be blood-and-soil compatriots. Immigration is generally seen as a threat to the local populace The point GP was making is that digital nomads are generally in a particular place only temporarily not permanently. So, feelings towards nomads is not the same as feelings towards immigrants. The latter are building community. The former simply feeds off of it.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    Most actual immigrants are nomads, at least where I live (Western Europe), they are "passing through". They do not intend to settle permanently. Which most governments love, by the way, yes to income taxes, no to pensions later. The only reason they stay is if they have no choice for some reason (e.g. Ukrainians or Russians fearing that if they go back will be sent to the front. Lots of those in the past 2 years). Issue is that a lot of them never intended to stay (and so didn't even bother to keep their visas up to date, so now the government must either) Is it sustainable? No. Not for the governments receiving these people. Because there's still less people to take over everything from political jobs to apartments in a system that is critically dependent on constant growth. Is it sustainable for the immigrants? No, for them it doesn't work either. The cost is no pensions later, and the issue with that is that to have a decent income to survive on, they'll need to save about a million euros per head (4% on that matches a local's "good" pension). And yes, everybody makes financial projections as if this is not the case. Why? Doing it like that means more money to spend right now ... and for now creditors (ie. the central bank) accepts the reasoning. And the truth is, we're nowhere near the point where this system must crash. 10 or so more years, and double that in the big cities.
Aurornis 2mo ago
> (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that Most of the people in their digital nomad groups were actually not full-time employed. They were trying to do contract work and then stretching out their earnings between jobs so they could travel. Living in these cheap locations was almost required to allow them to work the way they wanted. There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle. It reminded me of how much the indie hacker scene all fantasizes about being like the levels.io guy making crazy money selling simple services to his giant follower list, but most of them can barely get a couple dozen sales for their SaaS if they’re lucky. Everyone thinks of levels.io, but few people think of the long tail of people making less than they’d get at any full time job.
- throwaway13337 2mo ago
  I was just the sort you’re talking about. I did contract work so I could stay traveling and lived on money I made in previous full time jobs. It was a very nice way to live compared to the 9 to 5 even though I made less money. Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun. But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life. Cynicism will keep you in your 9 to 5.
  - maest 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - throwaway13337 2mo ago
      I guess my implied advice is to live the way you want even if it means making less money than you could? Yeah. I’ll own that. Believe it or not, you're on a website where a lot of the readers build stuff. And quite a few find success.
anonzzzies 2mo ago
It worked in my village, at least for the local who want to work with the incoming nomads; they all need things done and for them up to 10x the local cost is still cheap, so here the locals are thriving. And now everything looks/works better.
- jruz 2mo ago
  yes this works for a while till it grows and locals start to compete with the nomads and get priced out and have to move to the outskirts of their town. I’ve seen it happen in Spain, Costa Rica, Mexico, Bali etc.
  - anonzzzies 2mo ago
    I guess this place is just too small; this is more the type of place the article talks about ; this was dead a little while ago, but there are no outskirts and the locals own most nice builds and do airbnbs in them. It's too small to get this type of 'push out the locals' to be happening unless the locals just sell everything, but they are here with their kids etc as well. I can see that it would and does happen in bigger towns. You cannot build here either; nature reserve... You can only restore.
pjmlp 2mo ago
From the native point of view of one of such countries, Portugal, the problem is a problem of scale. When it is a couple of folks, bring life again to the village, small town, all good. Now when then it gets daily YT shorts, and TikTok videos, of how great the life is, and how "cheap" everything happens to be, while the locals pay through the nose for basic stuff. No the taxi ride, the restaurant bill, the supermart car filled all the way to the top isn't cheap when one is barely touching over 1000 euros after taxes, on average. So when it gets too much, the locals no longer find it as advantageous as they originally thought, and then votes into right wing parties rise, even from elderly folk that should have known better from dictatorships that ended in the 1970's. Naturally not everyone is like that, and many do integrate into local culture, and even do have videos calling out such behaviours from fellow nomads.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  But I don't get it. When push comes to shove, wealth is debt. Concentration of wealth is directly related, indirectly caused, by debt. Debt is what investors are willing to put in. The bigger the economic union they live in, the more debt investors will be willing to put up with. This leads to wealth concentrating over time, and the more concentrated wealth will be, the poorer these rural villages will be, and everybody runs. They chose policies to go deeper into debt, to join a bigger union to go deeper into debt. I mean, how is this not what they wanted?
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Because without the union, you would still take at least 6 hours drive from Porto to Evora, using national roads, preferably during the night unless you wanted to cook between 30 and 40 degrees celsius as I did so many times during may childhood in late 70's, early 80's, instead of the cosy 4h something from taking the motorway. That debt is what allowed many of the infrastructure that is now in place. However it is also the consequence of that debt, that only the middle to low level classes get to experience, that now puts all right wing parties on leading votes, even thought most Boomers and Gen Xers across Europe, should know better how living under dictatorships feels like.
tgv 2mo ago
> attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial That depends on the circumstances, doesn't it? In crowded areas, it automatically leads to competition, but these villages are empty. Having a few remote workers there is only going to help essential services. But if you think that not everybody will see it that way, you may be right. > this won't help with [Spain's "vibrant culture"] That is true. Even the idea that small villages form Spain's vibrant culture is a bit of an overstatement.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  > Having a few remote workers there is only going to help essential services ... It will delay the inevitable, if that's what you mean. Not by much. The whole point of being "nomad" is to leave quickly as well.
  - swiftcoder 2mo ago
    > The whole point of being "nomad" is to leave quickly as well. There are certainly a crowd of (mostly young, or early-retired) digital nomads for whom the mobility is a big priority, but as time goes by a hell of a lot of them turn out to be looking for somewhere to set down roots. Here in Spain we see a pretty steady pipeline of digital nomad -> rural homeowner
nephihaha 2mo ago
Many of them won't care about Spanish culture or care about the locals. I agree with your assessment.

ks2048 2mo ago

The town: Benarrabá, Málaga province, Andalusia.

retired 2mo ago
Which is an hours drive through twisty mountain roads to anywhere. No public transport. Why would a digital nomad live there, when for just a little bit more you can have a walkable town with public transport? Isn’t that where all the Americans are flooding Europe for?

xyzelement 2mo ago

Whether digital nomads contribute economically to local villages is a fine question. But - what is happening to Spain? It has among the lowest fertility in Europe and has only avoided collapse in population through migration form LATAM and North Africa. Why is spain suffering from this? What's happening in the villages is a symptom of something larger.

ronnier 2mo ago
It’s happening not just in Spain but across most of Europe, the USA, and East Asia. But lots of Europe and the USA have immigration to offset the population decline. China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, are in dramatic population declines. Even India has stared to level off and expected to decline.
- xyzelement 2mo ago
  Do you think the causes are the same across the regions?
  - ronnier 2mo ago
    Yes.
  - jdw64 2mo ago
    I think it's the same issue—wealth inequality. I believe this single issue can explain all of modern society's problems
    - grumbelbart2 2mo ago
      I find that unlikely, as it happens in countries with somewhat balanced wealth as well (and countries with the highest fertility rates have the highest wealth imbalance).
      - jdw64 2mo ago
        [dead]

amarant 2mo ago

I think if the right to work from home was encoded in law for any job which was practically possible to do remotely, you'd have a better shot at keeping rural villages alive without relying on foreigners. That would keep the local culture living instead of replacing it. But this is better than nothing I suppose, at least it prevents ghost towns

nightpool 1mo ago
How do you define a job "practically possible to do remotely"? It is not practically possible to attend in-person daily meetings remotely. While replacing in-person meetings with Zoom meetings is a choice many companies can and have made, I don't think anyone is saying that they're the exact same thing. If your job requires attending meetings to work on a team (and given that almost every job contains an aspect of teamwork), I don't see a clear way for the government to define when having in-person meetings are "required" for better team coordination. I certainly wouldn't want it to regulate by fiat whether zoom meetings were a required replacement for in-person meetings--that would be the same as the government defining Pi as 3.2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill)

fleroviumna 2mo ago

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lifestyleguru 2mo ago

Like... whom? Zuck or Larry? They're 10 years late to the party, digital nomads are no more. They can count on German and British pensioners, although personally I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics.

simonebrunozzi 2mo ago
> I'd prefer to be poor than to cater to this demographics. What's wrong with pensioners?
- lifestyleguru 2mo ago
  They left their multiple real estate back home so your kids can emigrate there and rent it, but your kids will have to work hard actually and unfortunately. On the bright side once your kids come back from emigration, they can in turn start catering to them.
- simianwords 2mo ago
  - poorer generally - don't add economic value - more health care expenses
  - johnnudd 1mo ago
    The British and German governments pay for the healthcare of their pensioners living in Spain via intergovernmental reimbursement agreements so the healthcare expense to Spain is in fact zero. They also provide a significant economic net benefit to Spain by injecting billions in "imported wealth" through real estate taxes, year-round consumption, and foreign-funded pensions.
    - lifestyleguru 1mo ago
      You mean EHIC card? It's only for medical emergencies, then UK freewillingly left the EU.
herbst 2mo ago

bluecalm 2mo ago

I have spent quite a bit of time in Andalusia and other poor Spanish regions. A lot of those towns are empty and have mainly older people left. Young ones do anything they can do go to a bigger city looking for opportunities. Some of them serve as retiree/vacation spot for mainly Spanish people from wealthier regions. They are ghost towns during the winter (when digital nomads want to come). In more touristy but still poor regions (like Tenerife) the official argument for anti-tourist policies is that most of the surplus economic value is captured by property owners while causing strain on infrastructure and making life more expensive for the locals. To me the obvious solution is to raise property/land value taxes and use the money to develop infrastructure and lower taxes for local working population. This way the incentives are aligned for everyone. The problem is politics is captured by property owners so it's easier to make villain out tourists/nomads to redirect anger of the locals while continuing like normal for as long as possible. Nomads are a group that doesn't drain welfare resources, pay for themselves and don't cause crime. They don't even take "your jobs" - they may even create some if enough of them come. If your policy is against them you truly lost it in my view.

lifestyleguru 2mo ago
It will always boil down to real estate ownership, squeezing and extracting the last available cash with rents. The taxation has to proactively prevent it. Once you allow non-residents to purchase, even if they have local passport, the prices go instantly to the moon.
- bluecalm 2mo ago
  It wouldn't be a problem if the tax burden was on property owners. If someone purchasing 500k EUR apartment had to pay even 2% of real value of it every year to local community they would be welcome with open arms. Unfortunately right now it's not the locals nor the local infrastructure that capture the benefits. If Spain (and most of the EU) had saner regulations then who knows, maybe they would even allow for building more in places people want to spend time in.
  - vladvasiliu 1mo ago

intothemild 2mo ago

It's always interesting watching counties try to lift the birthrate, and doing things that don't actually help improve the conditions that lead to the issue in the first place. Look here's an idea. If you're under a certain age, and you want to own a home and move to a small village etc.. you are granted 100% protection from the government from your employer and you can work 100% remote. Enshrined into law. Nothing the employer can do about it. Make it a whole nationalism thing to get the right wing on board. I know a whole bunch of people who would move to a country town in a heartbeat if they could, heck lots of people did it during the pandemic, the minute that remote work became a possibility. It's great they're chasing these digital nomads, but I'm not sure that's the solution that's going to work long or even medium term.

deleted 1mo ago
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wolvesechoes 2mo ago

With digital nomads is like with standard, recreational tourism. It is always promised by local decision-makers it will bring multiple benefits to locals, including economic boost, but it always a pact with a Devil where few reap rewards while rest are left impoverished, delegated to toilet cleaning and food serving, and local customs and culture are eroded.

Ekaros 1mo ago
And with likes AirBnB lead to increasing property values thus increasing rents thus taking even larger share of the income of those workers. Or entirely forcing them to be displaced. For little gain to them.

archiesun 1mo ago

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