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Repopulating villages through love - that is the ambitious task an insurance salesman from Madrid has set himself.
He organises caravanas de amor (love caravans) - busloads of women who roll periodically into Spain's remote rural outposts to be greeted with enthusiasm, tinged with apprehension, by scores of
single men.
Manuel Gozalo holds fast to his utopian dream in the face of today's cynical commercialism, as he prepares his latest caravan, the sixth this year, that heads next weekend to the village of Cabezuela de Segovia.
It started 22 years ago when a handful of single men in the Pyrenean village of Plan saw American film Westward the Women, released in Spain in 1955 as Caravana de Mujeres (Caravan of Women).
The film told of wagonloads of women heading west as potential wives for frontiersmen.
Plan, with its population of 170, was no vibrant frontier town, rather a rural backwater that women had deserted in search of livelier company and less drudgery. But the movie gave Plan's lonely bachelors an idea, and they put an ad in the regional newspaper: "Women wanted between 20 and 40 for matrimonial purposes in a village in the foothills of the Pyrenees". They received 57 replies within the week.
Spain's first busload of women trundled into Plan on March 7, 1985. Five more love caravans followed in four years. The plan from Plan produced 40 marriages.
And there it might have remained, a poignant attempt by solitary farmers to find a wife, with little impact beyond the mountain valleys of northeast Spain. But in 1995, another lonely chap yearned not only to find love but also to stem the decline of his own small village, Fuentesauco, near Segovia, north of Madrid.
Inspired by Plan, Manuel Gozalo revived the caravanas de amor, and 12 years on is organising his 32nd trip.
"There were 30 solterones [bachelors] and one widow in Fuentesauco," says Gozalo with a smile. "It was dying. The young women had left to work in offices or shops in town, and the only people left were single men who farmed their piece of land and tended cattle. There were no children, no school. In winter it was very sad." Gozalo, 50, joined the flight from the land 30 years ago to sell insurance in Madrid, but he travels home frequently and still considers himself a country boy at heart.
He mobilised some friends, put out the word in villages around Fuentesauco, and persuaded 30 women - with the promise of a day out and the chance of romance - to board the bus in June 1995.
"At first the idea was just to have fun, and it wasn't easy to find the women. We had music and dancing in the park, then dinner in the bar of Fuentesauco station, paid for by the men. There was a great atmosphere."
By popular demand, another caravan was organised a month later in nearby Laguna village.
His enthusiasm undimmed, he squeezes in front of his computer in his tiny flat in a workers' suburb of Madrid, fielding calls on three telephones from town halls, bus companies and applicants for tickets. His minuscule balcony accommodates a printer, a scanner, petunias, scarlet geraniums and bulging files.
It wasn't easy at first. "I nearly threw in the towel. In 1997 we organised only one caravan. No one seemed interested."
Interest picked up following the success in 2000 of Iciar Bollain's sympathetic film about the caravanas - Flores de Otro Mundo (Flowers of Another World) - that won the critics' prize at Cannes.
Today his Association of Women's Caravans has hundreds of affiliates, and a thriving bush telegraph ensures there are always men willing to pay £34 ($90) - women pay £18 - for the day.
"Town halls in tiny villages call me constantly asking me to send women. But they must be within 350km of Madrid, so we can return the same day. Sometimes the bus doesn't get back till dawn, which is tiring for elderly participants.
"The local town hall, bars and restaurants pay for the band, the lamb stew, the wine and sangria. That takes the pressure off me. At first I was paying for everything. The idea is to have a day out in the country, a fiesta and the promise of romance."
It worked for him. Bustling around our conversation is Venecia Alcantara whom he met in 1995 on the third caravan, a feisty woman from the Dominican Republic who gives him the affection he craved. But Gozalo aspires to be more than Cupid of the countryside. He wants to repopulate Spain's dying villages.
The statistics are stark: up to 96 per cent of Spaniards live in cities or on the coast, with just 4 per cent in tiny isolated communities.
Some 5000 towns are inhabited by fewer than 1000 people. More than 2500 villages are deserted.
The exodus started in the 1950s, the "hungry years" of Franco's dictatorship, and accelerated with the industrialisation of the 60s and 70s. Millions moved to the cities, where there was work, company and the prospect of education.
Many townies still return to their home village - "el pueblo" - for holidays or weekends, but countless more abandoned their birthplace for ever.
"The situation is desperate. The only people left in the villages are old people and single men who tend the family plot. If you want work you have to be in the city," Gozalo says. He admits his love caravans offer a symbolic rather than real contribution to his dream that couples will return and repopulate abandoned villages.
"The truth is that rural depopulation is irreversible."
What is to stop his utopian project becoming a business and attracting, shall we say, the wrong sort of woman? Gozalo's gentle face crumples to a frown. "I don't see it as a business. That would lose the romantic touch that people like. I could fill three buses for each trip. I sign people up in the order they come. I don't choose them."
His frown deepens into disapproval. "There were three women who ... they drank wine and became lightheaded. The tone is established by the women, respectful, in good taste, but with a spark of celebration."
Venecia holds back no longer. "It's definitely not a business," she interjects firmly. "It's an association of friends. Our reward is people's happiness when they are partying, and if they form a couple and eventually have children. But we are sowing the seeds that will encourage some people to bring their families back to the countryside."
Few receive Cupid's dart immediately, but some strike lucky: "Once a young woman missed the bus," chuckles Gozalo, "and I took her in my car and we arrived late. But she met a young man and stayed the night. Last to arrive, she was the first to score. It was love at first sight."
The men are shy when confronted with an exuberant busload of mostly Latin American women, and they are afraid of being laughed at, Gozalo said.
"Country farmers are a bit rough. They make earthy comments about the women. But they are straightforward, and gentlemanly in their way.
"Most are genuinely looking for a companion," Gozalo said. "And the women are not very educated, despite their clothes and makeup. They're mostly immigrants, working as cleaners or care assistants, often from small villages themselves. They'd like a home in a safe village with someone to care for. Everyone has a right to happiness."
- Independent
