There is no sign up to advertise it, but the residents of Ciñera de Gordón, in northern Spain, are aware their village is up for sale. The price: €122 million.
Included in the package are 128 houses, 12 flats, a football pitch, a public swimming pool, a cinema and a mine still bursting with coal.
Once a lively mining hub, Ciñera de Gordón is now a shadow of itself, with only 800 residents. For decades the mine has belonged to the firm Hullera Vasco-Leonesa, as has the land around it, which dictator Francisco Franco expropriated for it in the 1960s. Until the euro arrived, many families paid the firm 130 pesetas (less than €1) a month in rent.
Company asset
Hullera Vasco-Leonesa went bust last year and the town is among its assets up for sale.
"The worst thing about all this is that we found out our town was up for sale through the internet, when the judge issued the writ," one local, José, told El Mundo newspaper.
“It’s a very good place for tourists and for some property company to come along and buy it all up,” said a local who lost his mining job in 2015. “As for the closed mine, some Chinese have shown an interest.”
The Spanish coal industry has been in crisis for years with reports that consumption fell by nearly 50 per cent in the last year alone.
