The Albiztur City Council is concerned about the fact that in recent years no housing has been made in the locality and the neighbours have left. For them to be able to live in the village, work is being done right now and the focus has been on the empty villages there are.

Mayor Iñaki Orbegozo stressed that “almost a whole generation has left the people and we would like to do something for those who come.” Citizens want it to continue to live in the people, because that affects many of the services they provide. For example, at school. For a people to remain alive they need children, and without young people there are no children. Without children, the school would be left, and for the school to stay alive, it needs children.

Given the situation, and bearing in mind that there are many empty villages, the City Hall has had the advisor Gorka Egia to work on the issue and mediate on the issue. It is true that the project is being developed. The diagnosis began in April, before the summer, and after the summer it contacted the owners of the plots. In Albiztur more than forty voids have been recorded. The task of truth has been to list whether they would be willing to talk and sell or rent with all of them.

They also want to maintain heritage, because there are ‘houses of great history and high quality’.

The dwellings have been distributed in two areas. On the one hand there are the villages that are in the urban area and on the other there are the rural ones. Different treatment. In the case of rural people, they want to give importance to the primary sector and contact those who want to live from it. After acknowledging that they have already begun to bear their first fruits, they have been “happy”. Because they have the first people who want to live in rural areas.

Orbegozo explained that, first of all, the rules of the General Plan of the City of Albiztur have been subject to specific changes and are already in place. In this way, more than one dwelling can be built in the dwellings. “This is a good solution because it will be built less in the urban areas,” says Egia.

The mayor has explained that they had a meeting with the citizens to inform them of the elaboration, but that they will wait for something safe to come in their hands to be able to present some project.

Bridge work

The advisory service Egia is in Albiztur to carry out bridging tasks, and will work with the people who want to sell or rent the house and with the buyers. The aim is to create a movement to facilitate the works to the owners of the dwellings and to those concerned.

They want to start by making sales easier, and they are clear that selling a farmhouse is not easy at present, and the workload that this also entails for shoppers.

For this reason, in the case of the inhabitants of the urban area, a preliminary draft would be made to the owner of the dwelling, who is willing to comply with a number of requirements: “A preliminary project would be carried out with the local architect, which would allow the interested parties to see clearly what kind of housing would be built in this dwelling”.

Finally, Egia has pointed out that many homeowners have been “grateful” for the decision taken by the City Hall and have appreciated their willingness and collaboration. "There are a lot of people who want to sell their houses."