Driving north-east out of Madrid on the A2 motorway, the industrial sprawl seemed as never-ending as the roaring river of traffic. The change, when it came, was sudden and complete. After Peñarrubia the heavy traffic vanished, and with it the industrial estates and dull dormitory towns. We were now in Guadalajara, a province of Castilla-La Mancha which, with an average of just five inhabitants per square kilometre, has been described as “the largest demographic desert in Europe”.
The Spanish call places like this la España vaciada. The word for “empty” is vacío, but vaciada means “emptied”, as if there were something deliberate about the way the fabric of rural Spanish society has been worn threadbare by depopulation and underdevelopment.
