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Rural Village in Spain Is Welcoming Digital Nomads with Open Arms
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Rooral was featured on Condé Nast Traveler's Bright Ideas in Travel 2025. Read the full list of winners here.
In Spain, headlines and images of abandoned towns warn of rapid depopulation in the country’s smallest villages. Many fear that Spain’s vibrant culture will be left behind as rural populations thin out. But when I recently spent a month in Benarraba, a picturesque Andalusian village tucked into the mountains with just 350 permanent residents, those concerns seemed far away.
Strolling along the winding cobblestone streets lined with quaint white-washed buildings, I would pass a group of teenagers on their way to a coding workshop followed by a dozen women well into retirement age walking to the padel court with a 30-year-old traveler from South Korea. By sunset, I would take my spot in the community kitchen to make pasta topped with parsley from my neighbor’s garden and run next door to borrow chairs. Soon, the dinner table would be filled by people from all around the world.
Scenes like these played out every day during my month-long visit, showcasing a spirited and diverse community rather than one at risk of total desolation. I was here with Rooral, a program that hosts remote workers in Benarraba for up to two months and facilitates connections between visitors and local residents of all ages. By operating as both a co-working and co-living hub, the nonprofit organization is injecting new energy, creativity, and money into the region.
A Benarraba resident teaches a basket-weaving workshop
Rooral is one proposed solution that leverages travel to help bridge Spain's rural-urban gap, an issue known as Espana Vaciada (Empty Spain). A few cities in Spain like Barcelona and Madrid receive 90% of the country’s tourism dollars and nearly 100 million annual visitors, resulting in outcry and protests against over tourism in recent years. At the same time, young Spaniards are leaving the country's more remote regions to pursue education and corporate jobs in major cities, leaving 42% of the country’s 8,000 villages at risk of total depopulation, according to governmental projections.
As longtime residents leave, cultural traditions are forgotten and agricultural practices that once economically powered these villages—like harvesting cork for crafts and wine production—risk disappearing as well.
Juan Barbed, Rooral's founder, witnessed how digital nomads could help reinvigorate rural communities and traditions after working remotely in over 40 countries himself. So when he came up with the idea for Rooral, he "wanted to build something where the community is at the core,” Barbed says. “If it doesn’t work for them [local residents], it makes no sense.”
Rooral hosts potluck dinners for visitors and residents
As temporary residents of the village, Rooral participants are encouraged to get involved in community events like Spanish lessons and potluck dinners or even host their own workshops to share a slice of home. I often spent my free time painting with a crew of local women, affectionately called “the grandmas” among Rooral members, or helping a neighbor tend to his herb garden and pick oranges from a grove on the mountainside.