How can it possibly be the 25th January already? Even though every day seems to be the same as every other day, time itself does not appear to be slowing down.

Judging from comments across social media, we are not alone in finding this latest lockdown utterly relentless. It is hard to wake up each morning and think of something positive to find in the day ahead when we are bombarded by such constantly worrying news everywhere we turn. Once again, our little village finds itself in the toughest of lockdowns, but it is uplifting to see that, on the face of it, this latest set of restrictions does little to dampen the life-affirming optimism of our neighbours. They continue to go about their daily business as best they can, but it is worth considering the impact of this pandemic on these rural communities.

I digress slightly now to say that, as a byproduct of this grim period, I have managed to discover a long-lost uncle. My father had a very strange relationship with his family and had nothing to do with his own father from the day he left home. As a result of this decidedly uneasy relationship, I can’t recall ever meeting my uncles and aunts on my father’s side of the family. I knew of their existence, and my Mum used to receive a Christmas card every year from one of the aunts, but that was as far as it ever went.

When my father died in 2009, my brother Kim managed to get in touch with one of our uncles and it is this thread that I managed to pick up from an email that Kim had exchanged with our Uncle Tony back in 2014. I’m not going to elaborate too much on that right now, but I had an interesting chat with Uncle Tony recently about the pandemic. Tony is 85 and lives alone in Cyprus; his wife died 4 years ago. He was due to move back to the UK in June of last year, but restrictions surrounding Covid prevented the move and for Tony this is a substantial frustration. At his age, a year is a long time to have plans delayed. There are things that he wants to do, and he wants to get on with them. The same applies to Andrew’s father who is of a similar age - the impact of restrictions, even though they are there to protect us, has a much greater impact on active older people than it might do on us, as their perception of time is different.

I mention this as it shines a light on rural Spanish communities where there is a large percentage of the population living out their later years. Fortunately, the ways in which communities work in Spain means that older family members do have easy access to their family members, so from that perspective they are fortunate. However, if we look at villages as a whole it is a more worrying outlook.

Rural depopulation

There has been much written about rural depopulation in rural Spain, where communities just fade away as young people move to cities to find work and older residents are not being replaced when they die. Pandemics do little to slow down this process, and it has been interesting to see how our own town hall has responded to the issues that consequently arise. Last week, the village had a screening programme to test many village residents for the virus, and the more vulnerable are now being vaccinated. Our neighbours are adhering to the latest restrictions, and there is little to be gained from analysing why there has been such an increase in infection rates across Andalucia; we know that Christmas and the Three Kings festival played a significant part. Everyone is doing all they can to suppress any further rises in infection rates.

Bearing all this in mind, we have thought a lot over the past few months about the future of travel and how this period might affect our businesses. Our aim, as we have built up our small network of tourism-related ventures, has always been to give something back to the community in which we live. This approach fits in with all sorts of ‘trends’ in the sector, variously described as sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, cultural tourism, and more. For example, when we market property we want to ensure that our clients have a clear understanding of what living in a rural Spanish village entails and that being a part of a community comes with some responsibility. We see it as our own relationship between us, our neighbours and our guests and it really is that simple.

Travel as an immersive experience

We started to write our blog, ‘Two South of Granada’, just before we left the UK and it has increasingly become a chronicle of our lives here and why we are passionate about the area in which we have chosen to live. Given that we have such a love for this place, why on earth would we not want to ensure its future? Fortunately, we have managed to rediscover our Two South of Granada Instagram account, and we’ll be attempting to provide a more personal commentary on what guests can expect to find when they visit this beautiful part of Spain, and how best to appreciate their visit.

When guests come to stay with us at Casa Higueras or on one of our Cultural and Creative Courses, we don’t want to hide them away in some hermetically sealed bubble; we want to show them the places, the sights, the views and share with them the food, wine, culture and love of our neighbours that so typifies this corner of Spain.

To that end, we are trying to play our part in encouraging the travel sector to think differently as we plan the future. That might sound ambitious and presumptuous, but if every small, rural tourism business does something similar then we can drive significant change and ensure the longevity of rural communities. I wrote a little more about this in our previous post, and will undoubtedly touch on it again in the future.

As we have time on our hands, it made sense for us to revisit the four strings to our little Spanish bow and find a way of creating a more cohesive story. Thank goodness Andrew is a designer, that’s all I can say!

Sustainability and responsibility

Granada Concierge, GC Property Consultants, Casa Higueras and this blog, Two South of Granada, all do different things but the common denominator is our shared passion for southern Spain. We want everyone’s experience of Andalucia to be an overwhelmingly rich and memorable one, as our own experiences have been. After all, that is the way our society now moves - we gauge everything based on peer reviews, feedback, comments and word-of-mouth. With that level of influence comes responsibility, and our main philosophy is to ensure that we respect our adopted home.

This is the basis for our own style of sustainability and responsibility. It’s not a mere marketing ploy that we want to use local companies whenever we set out to do something. It makes sense to buy local produce, use local craftspeople and network with our neighbours. Obviously, it is rewarding when we find ourselves on the receiving end of a World Responsible Tourism Award, or receive booking.com reviews of 10/10, despite the tattered travel industry.

How do we sum up our manifesto, if that’s what we want to call it?

Our neighbours think nothing of helping out whenever they can, and never expect anything in return. Commerce is not the driving force; love, family, care and consideration are the foundations of society here. This is what we are trying to emulate as we face a new chapter. It’s really nothing more complicated than that.