A total of 29 proposals are participating in the great Rural Hackaton COVID-19 which will be held online this Wednesday, organised by El Hueco, and with the support of the Red Eléctrica Group. The Chairwoman of the Red Eléctrica Group, Beatriz Corredor, who participated at the meeting via video link, stressed that “we need ideas that help us to recover from the pandemic in the best possible conditions, and we need to think about how to do this so that these areas, which suffer the terrible drain of emigration on a daily basis, can face up to this new reality, as well as the situation that will emerge after COVID-19”, because in rural Spain “there are people, there are ideas and there is hope for a better life”.

The objective of this initiative "is to think as a community again, to think about social innovation, to look for different solutions to common problems, in a context as complicated as the one derived from this crisis that we have to live in rural Spain", summarizes the Communications Director of El Hueco, Roberto Ortega.

The initiative has received projects from Soria, Cuenca, Malaga, Zaragoza, Teruel, Segovia, La Rioja, Valladolid, Palencia, Tarragona, Asturias and Castellon "We think this is an amazing response, especially considering that we made an urgent call, with just two weeks to go", commented Ortega.

The ideas are varied, such as promoting proximity agriculture, community farms, platforms allowing villages to obtain funding for their projects, virtual markets, online companionship for people living alone, caring villages, the creation of a rural economic network, rural incubators to promote teleworking, a rural coworking network, projects related to artistic and cultural heritage, tourism platforms, collaborative housing, among others. All the projects will be published on the website, http://www.ruralhacking.com/ so that they can be used by anyone who finds it feasible to apply them in their territory, and one of them will be incubated by the company Bridge for Billions.

In her speech, the Chairwoman of Red Eléctrica reminded the audience of the important commitment the company has made to promoting social innovation activities: "We are involved in various projects with our friends of El Hueco because we have tried to work closely with those who are actually setting up specific initiatives with which we are trying to tackle a situation, namely depopulation in Spain, that we are worried about".

In addition to supporting the Hackaton Rural COVID-19 the Red Eléctrica Group has also supported other initiatives by El Hueco, such as the Presura fair, the tour of the Repopulation Bus and the setting up of a space for social innovation in the town of Paredes de Nava (Palencia).