2023-06-30 19:29:51
Ana María Castillero Martínez is a nurse and since June 17 she is also mayor of Huerta del Marquesado (Cuenca). She occupies one of the three mayors achieved by the group of voters + Cuenca Ahora in this province, integrated into the movement against Empty Spain.
After the elections of May 28, he obtained two of the five councilors that make up the City Council of this small municipality in the Cuenca Serranía. She will be the first female mayor of España Vaciada in the province and, they say from her political formation, that she is a way of “highlighting the fundamental role of women in rural areas.”
She already has management experience in the town hall. In the previous legislature she held the position of deputy mayor, with the PSOE, although she is quick to clarify that “I do not call being in the town hall of a town of 150 inhabitants doing politics.”
In this legislature, he joined the +Cuenca Ahora-España Vaciada project because “even if a Depopulation Law is put into effect, the big parties are influenced by the number of votes in the big cities. They do not see the needs in the same way that those of us who are in emptied Spain do see ”.
He believes that the solutions to depopulation “have to come from the people who are on the ground because those who are outside see it differently. The desire to fight is what makes us get into these troubles and in small towns it is more difficult than it seems”.
Claims the option to choose rural areas to live and work. From his point of view “now whoever lives in the town is because he wants to. It’s not like before. Perhaps it was considered a last resort.”
The town was his personal choice. “Almost all my life I have lived in the town except when I went to study in Zaragoza.” He was trained in Occupational Therapy, but he confesses that “it was very difficult to work here,” so he chose to also study Nursing and return. “Now it’s well seen, but then it seemed that if you went abroad, you didn’t have to come back because it was a failure, but I did and my children were born and raised here.”
He comments that young people “want to live in the town and in fact they come back every weekend. In my time, when we studied abroad, it took us weeks to return ”. Many older people live in Huerta del Marquesado, but also “very active” neighbors of all ages in a mountain population that lives on the mountain, from small businesses with an abundant presence of the tourism or craft sector. Not only are they investigating a Celtiberian castro in the area, but one of their restaurants has become a tourist attraction by getting a Repsol Sun and the latest initiative, he tells us, has come “from a boy from the town who left and with less 30 years old is back to open a very successful cocktail bar”.
They also have a water bottling plant, Fuente Liviana, a company owned by the Damm group, among others, which employs some 65 people thanks to the water from the sources of the Tagus, Júcar and Cabriel rivers.
“We have a bakery and the oven belongs to the town hall. We had rented it to a couple who stayed there for more than 20 years, they retired and now a couple from Madrid have taken it over, with two daughters. They’ve been here for almost three years.”
Now, she affirms emphatically, “we want to live here and have services. We are realistic: you cannot have everything. Also that there are advantages and disadvantages of choosing the rural environment, but we want to fight for the basics”. And she will do it from the mayor’s office. “It has to be now because my children want to be here and I would like them to continue to do so in the future.”
To combat depopulation, the mayoress believes that there is an ingredient that is missing in the entire Serranía Cuenca. “There is a lack of regional identity, there is a need to have that pride of feeling from here,” she laments. She extends it to all the depopulated areas in the province: “We need to unite. That identity and awareness of the situation is missing to be able to fight together, because nobody is going to come to give us anything.”
He believes that the mayors and councilors of +Cuenca Ahora-España Vaciada open a path. “Nothing better than a party that we form ourselves”, although he acknowledges the difficulties in a province “where not all areas are aware of the problem of depopulation. In La Mancha, for example, the towns are large. They don’t see it the same.”
Point to the example of Teruel. “They are 20 years ahead of us. We have to fight to show that we exist”.
+Cuenca Now he will not run in the general elections but Ana María Castillero believes that the first mayors obtained by the formation on May 28 “are the basis to continue with the runrún. Things can be done, but we need to unite,” he insists.
A little less than two decades ago, in Huerta del Marquesado the school had twenty children. Now there are eight. One of the objectives of the mayoress is that the school does not close. “It is my obsession because if that happens, in addition to losing the service, it would be a psychological downturn for the people.”
For Ana María Castillero “it is necessary that people come to the town, but it is even more so that the ones that are there do not leave.” She rejects possible “utopias” about what it means to live in rural areas.
Another of his purposes for the legislature has to do with employment and involves opening a coworking to telework from the town and also for the company Fuente Liviana to hire local workers. “When it opened, a lot of people were in the company, but they have been retiring. We want to sit down with them to talk about it because it is a way of consolidating the population”.
The municipality joined the Arraigo project last legislature through the Diputación de Cuenca. An initiative that helps families or people interested in living in rural areas. “Although it may seem unbelievable, one of the problems in rural areas is that there are no homes.” It is another of the challenges.
Her first plenary session as mayor has just been held to raffle off the polling stations for the general elections on 23J. “And we have already started with the distribution of a place that we want to open as a Ludoteca in addition to putting on the festivities that are in July.”
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