Spanish village up for sale after waiting for its inhabitants for 30 years

The village has several buildings and even a municipal swimming pool but no inhabitants

A village in Spain has been struggling to find its inhabitants for 30 years. So, its owner has decided to put it up for sale for only $259,000, the BBC has reported.

Salto de Castro, in north-western Spain, is located on the border with Portugal. It was built by an electricity generation company in the 1950s to house families of the workers who built a reservoir nearby. But the inhabitants abandoned it nearly three decades later after the completion of the reservoir.

However, the village still has several buildings, including 44 homes, a hotel, a school and a municipal swimming pool. But it has not had inhabitants for three decades, despite being only a three-hour drive from Madrid.

The current owner, who is now in his 80s, bought the village in the early 2000s, hoping to convert it into a tourist destination, but the eurozone crisis derailed the plan.

He has now listed the property for sale on the real-estate website Idealista. "I am selling because I am an urban-dweller and cannot maintain the upkeep of the village," he says on the website. The listing has received over 50,000 hits in a week.

Ronnie Rodriguez of Royal Invest, the company representing the owner, said 300 people had shown interest in the property, including those from Russia, France, Belgium and the UK. And one of them has even put money down to reserve it, the BBC reported.

Previously, the village was put up for sale for 6.5 million euros, but it couldn't find its next owner. As the buildings grew old, the price plummeted.