Stops ghost train and station abandoned, dot the landscape of the valle de Sanabria. This region of Castile and León, located 100 kilometres to the northwest of Zamora, was at the beginning of this year the news of the closure of the last point of sale face-to-face train tickets that was left. Since that day, the ticket office of the station of Puebla de Sanabria has been with the blind lowered, the heating of the waiting room turned off despite the low temperatures and the baths closed. A small sign, unnoticed in one of the doors that connect with the platform, and offered a phone number as an alternative to acquire tickets. No trace of the machine of self-Renfe, promised replacement. The reason for the company: its lack of use.
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“it is Not only the train,” explains Raul Barrado, mayor of Malpartida de Plasencia, a town in estremadura of 4,000 people that was also affected, as a hundred other municipalities. “It is necessary to add the closure of bank offices, health centers, clothes shops, food…”. Businesses that die out faster than their users due to the decline of customers, or reduced to a digital service in order to reduce costs, as suggested by Renfe. “People are being left without other alternative than to leave here,” says Beaming.
as the sale of tickets, the digital option has gained weight also in the banking world before the close of continuous atm —six offices per day in the third quarter of 2019— that already in 2017 had left more than 1.2 million spaniards without a bank in their locality. In the absence of a data more up to date, all indications are that that number has increased. More than 20,000 branches have disappeared since 2008, and more than half of the municipalities in Spain have no bank offices or atms, according to the Bank of Spain.
The mobile has become the basic tool to manage the accounts in these places, but the digital divide makes it a useless resource to an aging population and no resources to learn. “For years we have been struggling to visualize that this is a widespread problem,” says Stephanie of Régil, one of the founders of emancipaTic, non-profit association dedicated to educating adults in the use of new technologies. “There are a lot of people over 60 years of age who only know how to use the mobile to call and send whatsapps. Other people do not have smartphones and no one teaches them how to use these devices,” account from your experience. “It happens in big cities as well, although it is more common in rural populations, where there are missing services and where the digital alternative is not an option, is that they do not have left more remedy”.
Adif began to restore the Wednesday, the sale face-to-face in the hundred of stations which, like Puebla, they lost the service with the beginning of the year, before the multiple complaints from platforms, trade unions, and mayors of the affected municipalities. This rectification, in fact, became a key demand for the formation of a new Government, after the deputy Teruel Exists, Thomas Guitarte, carry the condition, the then-presidential candidate Pedro Sánchez. “It is a demand for the whole of Spain, not only for Teruel. The train is an essential service and vertebra regions of the country that is very impoverished and aged,” says the party, which has requested a study of impact and look for an alternative.
however, the service will continue “for six months”, according to Adif, until Renfe ends to adapt to the privatization of the train. The company, the only operator of the pathways until, in December, landed the French SNFC and the Italian Trenitalia-Island, has already warned that it will eliminate the sale face-to-face at the bus stops with fewer than 100 riders daily, and transmitted it to the Post office, where in many places only open one hour in the morning.
Juan Eugenio Mena, extremadura, the platform in defence of the Train Route of the Silver, ensures that the closure was not surprised: “With the excuse that we are not profitable, do not do more than crop needs and services to the most disadvantaged. To dog skinny, all are fleas.”
One of every four inhabitants of the province of Zamora does not have a bank branch in their locality. In that area coincides with the lower rate of access to the cash of Spain with the population aging of the country, with an average age of 50,7 years, according to the INE. Manage your account from your mobile phone or shopping Online can become an odyssey in this region.
“What of the Internet here is african,” says the mayor of Lubián, Felipe Lubián Lubián, whose surname denoted his origin in this population zamora of the High-Sanabria. While most of Spain is about to enter the era of 5G, the connection just comes to the districts of his zone. The datáfonos of businesses fail and many hoteliers may not offer even online reservations. Even so, his village has been one of the luckier ones: at least the branch that is open once a week, even though the network causes a continuous failure that they operations. In the same region, the village of Otero de Bodas has neither telephone coverage for a month and a half. The digital alternative, directly, does not exist.
The closure of bank branches have followed the disappearance of all kinds of shops. Almost 1.5 million people live in municipalities where there are no supermarkets. The majority, according to data from ASEDAS, the management of supermarkets, live in towns that do not reach the 330 inhabitants and where one of every three has more than 65 years.
The village asturiana de Carrandi is one of these examples. Gabriel Sakc, of cyber-volunteers, came to this old mining town belonging to the council of Colunga last November as part of the project of Expertclick, supported by the Spanish Banking Association to combat the digital divide.
In this small population of mountain there are no shops, gas stations, or pharmacies. Until the service of mass has disappeared. Buses run only once a week and the Internet connection works well only in the social center, created recently by the neighbors and in which is concentrated nearly the whole of the activity of the town. “For this type of populations that are very isolated and its inhabitants have a high dependence, learning to use the Internet is essential. Many have problems to navigate, and know how to use the mobile phone to request medical appointments or to access your pension is vital. The problem is that most people don’t know how.”, ensures Sakc.
The double-edge of the scan
Although the Internet is offering as alternative for the areas that start to lack of physical services, the digital option sometimes also by promotingta the demise of the business of proximity, increasingly scarce in rural Spain.
Carlos Mato, was born in the same shoe store that today manages, the only one that remains in Puebla de Sanabria. A trade centenary that has passed from generation to generation. But now, the accounts of the local go downhill. E-commerce will sink the business and the customers are scarce. “People buy more from the Internet and, especially, in the villages around, where if you want anything you have to take the car,” says the clerk. Their problem, that they share a good part of the business, small and medium, as has been warned on several occasions, the Spanish Confederation of Commerce, is accentuated by the loss of customers that leads to the indentation demographic of rural areas.
A few meters of the shop, Teresa Escudero, 50 years, works with her husband in the shop of home appliances. Refuses to buy on the Internet. “Is to throw stones over your own roof. The other day I saw the Amazon data: 500 billion of orders this Christmas, but hardly pay taxes. And us, the 21% each month. Are bringing us to ruin, cries out outraged. The last clothing store of Puebla de Sanabria has already placed the sign of settlement closing. To its owner, Jesus Centeno, 50 years of age, close this family business “is a pain of the heart”. Ten years ago the trade began to fall sharply: “First, the depopulation and now, above, the sale by Internet …”
