Ana and Alberto are the guardians of a town that struggles not to become extinct in the oblivion of winter.. Settled in La Riba de Santiuste (Guadalajara), this administrator and this bricklayer have become the only people who live in a municipality with 12 registered people.

Together with his two children, his life pivots between car trips to Sigüenza and daily walks through the town to make sure that there is no damage to the houses.. They like their life, but they would also like the Administration to take more care of the rural world. This is the story of two people from Madrid who fled the capital to become a reference for dozens of families.

When they wanted to send Alberto Martínez out of Spain for work reasons 18 years ago, his family found a new home in the house that he himself had built in La Riba to spend the weekends. His own hands raised and sculpted the stone that now shelters the only people who continuously inhabit this enclave crowned by a medieval castle that delights locals and visitors.

“There were few bricklayers in the area and since we started coming here they were asking me for jobs.. Although income dropped when we left Madrid, we saw that we could live well here”, he recounts at the door of his house.

Now it has been converted into the pedestrian mayor, since the town administratively belongs to Sigüenza. He takes care that the comforts that are more than established in the cities also reach the town: “Before there were only 14 telephone lines and I managed to get the internet to arrive, a little in that way. This has allowed people to stay a little longer teleworking”, says the bricklayer.

His day to day is easy, nothing out of the ordinary, except that the car becomes essential to survive. Without any premises or shops, in La Riba the only business there are two rural houses that almost every weekend have guests.

The closest thing to the market that they have is the baker, the greengrocer and the one with the frozen food truck that, when they arrive in town, sound their horn to warn of their arrival.

The only child

Both he and Ana Martínez work in Sigüenza, so any unforeseen event can be solved in the city of reference. But they are not alone. They live with Dani, 22, and Darío, the youngest in the house who, at 11, begins to feel the ravages of being the only small child living in the town.

“A few more kids always come on weekends, so they play here. If not, another day we go up to Sigüenza so that he can be with his school friends”, says the 55-year-old father.. A school where Dario goes by bus, on the route that picks up schoolchildren from the villages every day.

The mother thinks that “time must be managed very well” so that they do not become slaves and have to go to Sigüenza three times a day. “Now Dario wonders why he lives here, what a shitty town, but we try to explain the circumstances. We are not going to consent to everything because he is the little one,” emphasizes Ana in the living room of her house.

Individuals from La Riba

In La Riba, everyone knows each other, for better and for worse. It is true that some people decided to stay in the town knowing that Alberto and Ana would be there permanently, but they are still very few.

“People come every two or three months and in summer. It gives you a bit of the feeling that you have to keep an eye on everything, see every afternoon that the doors of the houses are securely closed, that no pipes have burst due to the ice…”, the current brigade officer develops. Masonry of the Town Hall of Sigüenza.

In him rests the greatest confidence of a town that seems to sleep until the arrival of the summer season. By then, Alberto will have fixed any damage that occurred during the long and hard winter.

Already in summer, the pylon becomes the epicenter of social life in La Riba, the most frequented place of passage next to the pediment and the basketball court that is on the outskirts, on the way to the castle, even if it is just 150 meters from the riparian center.

Here, things go at a different pace. The family is hardly contaminated by the ups and downs and frenzy of the big cities, and it is that the place accompanies this acclimatization. In La Riba there are no sidewalks, but there are steep slopes.

There are no pubs or discos, but there are roe deer and wild boars that roam the cobblestones at night. There is no supermarket, but there is a neighbor willing to lend you everything you need. The garbage truck passes once a week in summer and every two weeks in winter.

Ana integrates the administrative staff of the Sigüenza property registry. She is 52 years old and, in her case, she did imagine that she would end up in a place like this. When I lived in Vicálvaro, I worked in a sales and management training company in El Pinar de Las Rozas.

“I don’t miss any other place. Just for the family, to see them more often, but that’s it,” he says..

She is very happy to live in La Riba, partly because of her relationship with the neighbours: “In a city you come home and even if you have 10, 40 or 200 neighbours, you don’t know them, you barely have contact with them”. In this town, trust is so deep that Ana and Alberto keep some keys to their neighbors’ homes, for what could happen. Likewise, among the negative aspects, unwanted loneliness stands out, that is, not having anyone to lend a hand if needed..

A castle and depopulation

The main attraction of the town, even ahead of the area in which it is located, of great wealth in terms of flora, fauna and mineral composition, having been an inland sea in the place, is the castle.

In private hands, the fact that it could be visited would be great news for La Riba because of the people it would attract. “The Sigüenza archaeologist is trying to have more studies on him with the permission of the owner to find out his history,” says Alberto.

If they manage to make the castle visitable, it would mean taking a big step in the evolution of a town that refuses to die, just like what happened with the arrival of the internet. “This I had to fight a lot with Sigüenza.

Now some mobile coverage arrives, but not for all operators. At least we can work, because at first I couldn’t even send budgets”, Alberto underlines as he walks towards the outskirts of town. That was a revulsion, almost at the same level as what it meant for La Riba that a young couple decided to stay and live in it.

“Knowing that we were staying, there were some of the people of the whole life of the town who also wanted to be here longer. The children told us that if we didn’t mind giving them a hand from time to time, it doesn’t cost us anything.. Knowing that there is a car, if something happens we go out shotgun and that’s it,” the bricklayer elaborates..

But time, although somewhat slower, also passes. Of those older people who decided to stay, five people have already died. Alberto has opened holes in the cemetery, in fact. In any case, the marriage continues to be like the nephews who take care of those predecessor generations.

In short, there is a lack of people, and a lack of young people. “What makes me sad is the little help from the Administration so that people come to live in the towns, because a lot of them want to, but can’t. If they put in the necessary services, things would change,” says Ana.

Despite the fact that empty Spain became emptied Spain, this victory in language has not materialized in the earthly life of some peoples condemned to disappear if they are not injected with new blood. Ana and Alberto fight for it.