This Rural Region in Spain is Paying Remote Workers $16,000 To Move There

30.08.2024 - 18:23 / cntraveler.com

Ranked consistently as one of the best places to reside after retirement, projected to be the most visited destination in the world by 2040, and voted year after year in the Readers’ Choice Awards as one of our readers’ favorite countries, living in Spain is an aspiration for many. Now, following the announcement of a new digital nomad program, eligible remote workers could be paid to move to Spain's picturesque countryside.

On August 25, 2024, the Regional Government of Extremadura—an autonomous community in Spain—released information regarding their new digital nomad initiative. The program, called “Live in Ambroz”, offers remote workers up to €15,000 (around $16,620) in grants to relocate to Ambroz Valley, a rural area of Extremadura, for at least two years.

Just under a three-hour drive from Madrid and about two hours away from Portugal, Ambroz Valley is home to bucolic forests, charming villages, and scenic mountains. It has eight towns in total: Abadía, Aldeanueva del Camino, Baños de Montemayor, Casas del Monte, La Garganta, Gargantilla, Hervás, and Segura de Toro.

The region was awarded an EDEN (European Destination of Excellence) Award in 2019 from the European Commission for its “sustainable tourism practices [as a] smaller tourist destination," specifically honoring the valley’s millenia-long heritage as a wellness center. Its top attractions include the famous Baños de Montemayor Roman Spa, where modern thermal pools sit alongside those used over 2,000 years ago by the Romans, the Silver Greenway, which was hiked by the Celts at the tail-end of the Bronze Age, and the annual Magical Autumn Festival (Otoño Mágico) celebrating the valley’s biodiversity and landscape.

Though Ambroz Valley is a celebrated destination of Spanish heritage, the permanent residential population of the region remains quite small. Hervás, the capital of the region best known for its historic Jewish quarter, is the most populated village in the valley with 3,907 residents as of the last census. Fellow municipalities, such as Segura de Toro, have populations as low as 181 residents. The new digital nomad program was designed to help combat this population decline, as Ambroz Valley is “one of the areas that is suffering from a constant loss of population and services,” per the press release from Extremadura.

The valley is one of the country's many rural regions facing a concern known as “Empty Spain.” The term coined by author Sergio de Molino in his 2016 nonfiction book, La España Vacía, describes the contrast between the country’s underpopulated interior and crowded urban centers, which have recently been strained by the stress of overtourism. The dearth of economic opportunity in so-called Empty Spain regions has