American entrepreneur buys abandoned Spanish village for €310,000, plans revival

​Image(s): Left/Instagram/jasonbeckwith1/Right/Óscar F. Civieta Picture an entire village standing silent above a river, its houses empty, its school without pupils and its bar without customers. Now picture an American couple walking through it and deciding to bring it back to life. That is the story of Salto de Castro, a settlement in western Spain that stood abandoned for more than three decades before a Californian entrepreneur bought it. Here’s how the purchase happened, what the village contains, how much money is involved, how residents might fit into the plan, and what the proposed project could mean for the future of rural Spain.How Jason Beckwith went from running guesthouses in California to buying an abandoned Spanish villageBeckwith told El País that he opened a guesthouse, sold it five years later, took a sabbatical year and then decided with his wife to open another, which is when he found Zamora. Medium, in an interview with him, reports that in spring 2024 he and his wife, Ana Cristina Machado, were looking for a new hospitality project when he read that Salto de Castro was for sale. Despite speaking no Spanish and knowing no one locally, he flew to Madrid that sum...