The Rural Paradox: Empty Homes and No Housing in Catalonia's Villages
Catalonia's small villages have over 16,000 empty homes, yet newcomers can't find anywhere to live. Why it happens, and how to fix it without speculation.
By Roger Riera
In short: Catalonia's villages of fewer than 2,000 people have at least 16,683 empty homes, according to INE 2021 data compiled in a rural housing guide published in 2025. Yet people who want to move there can't find anywhere to live. The houses exist, but they're closed, run-down, hard to trace back to an owner, or rented to tourists. We don't think the answer is building more. It's bringing existing homes back to life with non-speculative models, run by people who know how to do it and plan to stay.
Houses without people, people without houses
In April 2025, a guide on empty homes in rural and mountain municipalities, funded through ARCA's Cal Rural project, counted 16,683 empty homes in Catalan municipalities with fewer than 2,000 inhabitants. The figure leaves out villages of fewer than 500 people, because INE doesn't publish that data for them, so the real number is higher.
Village leaders have been saying the same thing for years. Mario Urrea, president of the Associació de Micropobles de Catalunya, has called the lack of quality, habitable housing the main problem of the rural world. The interest in moving is there. The homes you can actually live in are not.
Why the homes stay closed
- Condition. Many houses were left behind decades ago and never maintained, and bringing them back costs money that owners often can't or won't spend (NacióDigital).
- Owners who are hard to reach. Spain's Most Beautiful Villages association and the Spanish Association of Mountain Municipalities have pointed out that many ruined houses belong to heirs who have lost touch with the village, and councils sometimes can't even locate them (joint statement, 2022).
- Tourist rentals. The same associations warned that in their villages the rental market goes almost entirely to tourist lets, so families who want to settle can't find an affordable long-term rental.
- Trust. Handing a family home to strangers feels risky. Without someone the owner trusts and a clear agreement, the door stays shut.
Public money is starting to move
The Generalitat's plan against depopulation, presented in November 2025, includes €20 million over 2026–2029 to renovate 400 empty homes and unused public buildings as main homes or affordable rentals, plus a rural housing pool run by the Agència de l'Habitatge de Catalunya. In March 2026 it announced a first €5 million call for 590 rural municipalities, with separate lines for owners, non-profit housing cooperatives and councils, and conditions such as keeping the home in habitual or affordable use for at least ten years.
Calls open and close and each line has its own rules, so check the official call and your town council before counting on a grant.
How we see it at Kalart
Kalart has lived in an old farmhouse at the foot of the Montseny since 2018. A few convictions shape how we look at empty houses:
- Restore before you build. An empty house that comes back to life keeps a piece of the village alive. A new build somewhere else doesn't.
- People who stay, not people passing through. Our minimum stay is one month and our community lives in the house day to day. That's the opposite of a weekend let that leaves the village empty again on Monday.
- Out of speculation. We look for non-speculative ways to access housing, such as rural masovería and cooperative use-transfer, so homes go back to people who will live in them.
- Trust takes time. Owners and neighbours need to see who's moving in and how the house will be looked after. That relationship comes before any contract.
Who this is for (and who it isn't)
It's for people thinking of starting a coliving, cohousing or community house in rural Catalonia, and for owners of an empty house who would like to see it lived in again. It isn't a shortcut to cheap property: renovating an old house takes time, money and patience, and every village has its own rhythm.
The honest part
A coliving won't solve a village's housing problem on its own, and not every empty house can be saved at a reasonable cost. The data has gaps too: the 16,683 figure comes from 2021 and misses the smallest villages. What we can say is that the houses are there, the interest is there, and what's often missing is someone who knows how to connect the two and wants to stay.
How Kalart Seeds helps
Kalart Seeds is our learning-by-doing incubator for people who want to create the next generation of intentional rural colivings. We look for large rural houses, usually with 6 to 12 rooms, we favour renovating over building, and we support each new project through its first year. Each month we select one person, who lives at Kalart for four weeks with accommodation covered by a scholarship (travel and meals are on you).
Apply now to the Kalart Seeds incubator and make the leap from traveller to community creator. Apply to Kalart Seeds.
Starting from zero? Read our step-by-step guide to starting a rural coliving in Spain, then the legal models for a rural coliving in Catalonia and how to build a rural coliving business plan. Questions about living at Kalart are answered in our FAQ.
Sources: Guide on empty homes in rural municipalities (EbreDigital, Apr 2025) · Associació de Micropobles via NacióDigital (2022) · Most Beautiful Villages and mountain municipalities (2022) · Catalan plan against depopulation (3Cat, Nov 2025) · Rural renovation grants (NacióDigital, Mar 2026)
