Rural Village in Spain Is Welcoming Digital Nomads with Open Arms | Hacker News Reader

Rural Village in Spain Is Welcoming Digital Nomads with Open Arms

cntraveler.com

109 pointssimonebrunozzi140 comments

As I understand it, these attempts to use digital nomad money to revive impoverished areas tend to become controversial when the impoverished locals realise what it means to compete with (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins. Maybe in particular circumstances it can work, like if the locals actually get most or all of the money spent by the newcomers (rather than going into the pockets of absentee landlords or large corporations).

The article opens by noting fears about Spain's "vibrant culture" dying out. Needless to say, this won't help with that problem and may well accelerate it, unless Spanish culture is coding workshops and padel (per the article).

In Cuenca, EC you have a lot of retirees and a few digital nomads. Most people don’t make a big move to spend more money than they would in their home country. So they frequent all of the same small local businesses and markets as the locals. No one learns Spanish so some money funnels into interpreters and facilitators. I ended up spending a lot of money on restaurants started by immigrants because I don’t like Ecuadorian cuisine that much. All of this to say that the money is distributed more than one might think.

> (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins

I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that

Most of the people in their digital nomad groups were actually not full-time employed. They were trying to do contract work and then stretching out their earnings between jobs so they could travel. Living in these cheap locations was almost required to allow them to work the way they wanted.

There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle.

It reminded me of how much the indie hacker scene all fantasizes about being like the levels.io guy making crazy money selling simple services to his giant follower list, but most of them can barely get a couple dozen sales for their SaaS if they’re lucky. Everyone thinks of levels.io, but few people think of the long tail of people making less than they’d get at any full time job.

I was just the sort you’re talking about.

I did contract work so I could stay traveling and lived on money I made in previous full time jobs. It was a very nice way to live compared to the 9 to 5 even though I made less money.

Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun.

But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life.

Cynicism will keep you in your 9 to 5.

> Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun.

Hostels are not fun, unless you are in your early 20s.

In my late 30s now, I don’t even do hotels with a shared toilet anymore. I need my own private room and my own private en-suite bathroom at minimum.

My rule is maximum 2 people per first toilet, or else it isn’t a vacation.

Hostels are fun if you have that disposition.

If you don't, even 5 star hotels can be miserable.

Up to a point. Hostels are very irritating now in that there is always someone on their phone at all hours lighting up the entire room. Also some noise issues.

I find quieter hostels much better. When I was over in Ireland, the ones in Belfast and Dublin were awful, and in county Galway. I found wonderful ones in Co. Donegal, Armagh and Limerick.

Depends on the hostel and the guests. It's a few months since I had a roommate on their phone at night.

I've had noise issues in hotels and I've had quiet hostels. Totally orthogonal.

Meh, although I'm conscious of the possibility I might be seen as a creepy old guy in his mid-thirties, I still find that hostels can be fun. I don't necessarily want to go out partying with 20 year olds, but an occasional few drinks with strangers and the ability to re-allocate funds to something more interesting than a hotel is very valuable. Travelling is already expensive as hell, I'm going to do it the way I want, and there's usually outgoing people within the same approx age range that want to do similarly.

That said, much like hotels, some hostels do suck; bedbugs are not chill, location is important, cost is important, vibe is important. I found that hostels that were more suited to families trying to save money were the least appealing as someone with just a spouse and a type B personality.

I hate paying for hotels so much that I visit my hometown less than I would otherwise if the city had a decent hostel.

I'm 58 and still choose hostels over hotels but I avoid party hostels. Sometimes I hang out with someone older than me, sometimes with someone younger than me. Usually I hang out on my own and don't mind it. I've had bedbugs in a "business hotel".

58 here. Hostels are fun. But I do avoid party hostels full of only people in their 20s.

> But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life.

There were examples like this of people in the groups hitting on something and making enough money to retire (if they managed their money right)

It was the rare case. The end result for most of them was moving back home and taking a normal job when hopping between hostels and digital nomad group homes stopped being fun and none of their business ideas got traction.

> One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that

The thing is, having a Western passport and earning $10k-20k a year (untaxed) in countries where the median household incomes (ie. 2 working adults) are at best comparable to that is living like a king comparatively speaking.

There's a reason western expats are looked down on derisively by locals across ASEAN and the only ASEAN state with a semi-functional democracy (Malaysia) is also one of the least budget tourist friendly - the middle class and above look at tay ba lo with disgust as losers, and the lower class only look up to them for the opportunity to get a more powerful visa. The high rate of "passport bros" also doesn't help.

It's like that scene from Futurama when they all accidently age backwards: "Oh, so this is the famous Fry. What is he, like, the biggest loser on the surface, so he has to hang out in the sewer?

Fry: They're on to me!"

The reality is, most kinds of tourism only lead to the development of extractive economic institutions at the expense of human capital development and higher value economic sectors that would benefit from that.

And in the case of this specific village and town in Andalusia, this will only exacerbate anti-tourism politics which has helped both Vox and Podemos because rural Andalusia is absolutely not equipped to support a sudden influx of transitory high income outsiders.

Sounds like you have a low estimation of European people friend

>>The reality is, most kinds of tourism only lead to the development of extractive economic institutions at the expense of human capital development and higher value economic sectors that would benefit from that.

Those are dying towns. Tourism/digital nomads are their lifeline. There is no "human capital development" to speak of. Young people there do everything they can do migrate to bigger cities. Have you ever been to the region? Many of those towns look like ghost towns.

The main industry they have is greenhouse farming which actually drains the scarce resource the population need (water) while causing a lot of plastic pollution and mainly employing migrants paying them peanuts.

I’m on an extended vacation right now.

Realistically I’ll take 4 to 8 weeks off while looking for work back in the US.

I had a revelation a few years back.

Taking real vacations is absolutely necessary.

If I can work 12 months at 70 to 80$ an hour I generally can afford 8 to 12 weeks off as long as I as I’m not in the US or Europe.

When I think out of the box, I do imagine working on my own ideas during my travels. Met a brilliant 23 year old last year who speaks 3 languages, and programs in Python and Java

I could probably hire him at 10$ an hour.

Vs some 23 year old American who will demand 45$ an hour and tell me Python sucks.

But then I wake up, back to looking for my next contract.

From the native point of view of one of such countries, Portugal, the problem is a problem of scale.

When it is a couple of folks, bring life again to the village, small town, all good.

Now when then it gets daily YT shorts, and TikTok videos, of how great the life is, and how "cheap" everything happens to be, while the locals pay through the nose for basic stuff.

No the taxi ride, the restaurant bill, the supermart car filled all the way to the top isn't cheap when one is barely touching over 1000 euros after taxes, on average.

So when it gets too much, the locals no longer find it as advantageous as they originally thought, and then votes into right wing parties rise, even from elderly folk that should have known better from dictatorships that ended in the 1970's.

Naturally not everyone is like that, and many do integrate into local culture, and even do have videos calling out such behaviours from fellow nomads.

But I don't get it. When push comes to shove, wealth is debt. Concentration of wealth is directly related, indirectly caused, by debt. Debt is what investors are willing to put in. The bigger the economic union they live in, the more debt investors will be willing to put up with. This leads to wealth concentrating over time, and the more concentrated wealth will be, the poorer these rural villages will be, and everybody runs.

They chose policies to go deeper into debt, to join a bigger union to go deeper into debt.

I mean, how is this not what they wanted?

Because without the union, you would still take at least 6 hours drive from Porto to Evora, using national roads, preferably during the night unless you wanted to cook between 30 and 40 degrees celsius as I did so many times during may childhood in late 70's, early 80's, instead of the cosy 4h something from taking the motorway.

That debt is what allowed many of the infrastructure that is now in place.

However it is also the consequence of that debt, that only the middle to low level classes get to experience, that now puts all right wing parties on leading votes, even thought most Boomers and Gen Xers across Europe, should know better how living under dictatorships feels like.

That's completely right. If your village appears on CNN Travel, it's basically game over.

Whether digital nomads contribute economically to local villages is a fine question.

But - what is happening to Spain? It has among the lowest fertility in Europe and has only avoided collapse in population through migration form LATAM and North Africa. Why is spain suffering from this?

What's happening in the villages is a symptom of something larger.

It’s happening not just in Spain but across most of Europe, the USA, and East Asia. But lots of Europe and the USA have immigration to offset the population decline. China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, are in dramatic population declines. Even India has stared to level off and expected to decline.

Is the idea that population growth will continue indefinitely? Eventually you run into limits

it has happened what it's happening in almost all the world, at different speeds. It's a combination of factors, economic, cultural, gender roles and general societal expectations (secularization, individualism, self-realization over family, etc.)

Particular factors in Spain compared to other European countries are: chronically high unemployment rates, especially among the younger ones, low salaries and exploitation at the start of the career and general work culture with little respect of workforce (you are always replaceable, be thankful to your bosses). This makes children very unaffordable, people wait until they are "stable enough", which never happens.

The issue with these small towns in Southern Europe is that they don't offer services, because they are abandoned. No schools, no shops, no hospitals... you end up being isolated, struggle for a lot of basic needs, and you leave. Not enough people -> less and less services, and the cycle goes on. There may be a few exceptions of course.

> chronically high unemployment rates, especially among the younger ones

This is an economic signal that there are too many people relative to available jobs. Get demand for people up and the rest will follow.

This would necessarily mean wage inflation outpacing asset price inflation, which the asset-owning public will hate.

it's not that there are too many people, it's more that the type of jobs that are abundant are low-wage, temporary and low-skilled.

I think if the right to work from home was encoded in law for any job which was practically possible to do remotely, you'd have a better shot at keeping rural villages alive without relying on foreigners. That would keep the local culture living instead of replacing it.

But this is better than nothing I suppose, at least it prevents ghost towns

How do you define a job "practically possible to do remotely"? It is not practically possible to attend in-person daily meetings remotely. While replacing in-person meetings with Zoom meetings is a choice many companies can and have made, I don't think anyone is saying that they're the exact same thing. If your job requires attending meetings to work on a team (and given that almost every job contains an aspect of teamwork), I don't see a clear way for the government to define when having in-person meetings are "required" for better team coordination. I certainly wouldn't want it to regulate by fiat whether zoom meetings were a required replacement for in-person meetings--that would be the same as the government defining Pi as 3.2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill)

The town: Benarrabá, Málaga province, Andalusia.

Which is an hours drive through twisty mountain roads to anywhere. No public transport.

Why would a digital nomad live there, when for just a little bit more you can have a walkable town with public transport? Isn’t that where all the Americans are flooding Europe for?

I have spent quite a bit of time in Andalusia and other poor Spanish regions. A lot of those towns are empty and have mainly older people left. Young ones do anything they can do go to a bigger city looking for opportunities. Some of them serve as retiree/vacation spot for mainly Spanish people from wealthier regions. They are ghost towns during the winter (when digital nomads want to come).

In more touristy but still poor regions (like Tenerife) the official argument for anti-tourist policies is that most of the surplus economic value is captured by property owners while causing strain on infrastructure and making life more expensive for the locals.

To me the obvious solution is to raise property/land value taxes and use the money to develop infrastructure and lower taxes for local working population. This way the incentives are aligned for everyone.

The problem is politics is captured by property owners so it's easier to make villain out tourists/nomads to redirect anger of the locals while continuing like normal for as long as possible.

Nomads are a group that doesn't drain welfare resources, pay for themselves and don't cause crime. They don't even take "your jobs" - they may even create some if enough of them come. If your policy is against them you truly lost it in my view.

It will always boil down to real estate ownership, squeezing and extracting the last available cash with rents. The taxation has to proactively prevent it. Once you allow non-residents to purchase, even if they have local passport, the prices go instantly to the moon.

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