From Zubiri, in Navarra, to Santiago de Compostela, in A Coruña. From Monday 19 until mid-September, the Repopulation Bus will go through the Camino de Santiago with the aim of once again showing an attractive, thriving, and entrepreneurial rural Spain.

The Repopulation Bus is part of the activities of Presura, the national fair dedicated to the fight against depopulation that is held every year in Soria. The initiative, organized by El Hueco, with the support of the Red Eléctrica Group, including its subsidiary Hispasat, Enisa, Cesce, the City Council of Soria and the Governments of Navarra and La Rioja, travels every summer to various rural provinces to give value to the initiatives that are being developed in it.

The slogan of the 2021 Presura Tour is ‘Rural Femenino’, with the aim of highlighting projects promoted by women along the route. To make it visible, the bus sports a large image of a woman in a cape, a modern rural heroine, created by the Malaga-based Basque artist María Lezón.

“Rural Spain has female talent, that of entrepreneurial women who are committed to innovative and creative initiatives, who break stereotypes in a more traditional environment than the urban one and who overcome barriers, both personally and professionally. The reactivation of our peoples happens, among other issues, by supporting and making their women visible. They can be a benchmark for many others”, says Beatriz Corredor, president of the Red Eléctrica Group.

“Women have always been fundamental to the rural environment, and they will continue to be even more so in the rural environment of the 21st century that we are now redesigning. For this reason, their projects and concerns will be the main protagonists this year, when we have also wanted to link the route to the Jacobean Year”, explains Joaquín Alcalde, Director of El Hueco, and he adds: “The Camino de Santiago was a very important route for Spain. Through its people, goods and also new ideas circulated, different ways of seeing the world. This year we want to recover that spirit, that vitality”.

The route begins next Monday in the Navarran town of Zubiri and will continue through the lands of the Autonomous Community of Navarra, with stops in Pamplona (day 20) and Arcos (day 21). On the 22nd, the bus will arrive in Logroño, and will continue through La Rioja territory in Nájera (day 23) and Santo Domingo de la Calzada (day 24).

The following week, the bus will stop in Sigüenza on Monday 27 (Guadalajara), and will then change community and arrive in Burgos, in Castilla y León, with visits to Belorado (28th), Padroluengo (also 28th), and Salas de los Infantes and Quintanar de la Sierra, both on the 29th.

Rural Spain is shown to the world, live 

At each of the stops there will be a live television program, which will be broadcast by PresuraTV on its YouTube channels and its website, which will feature entrepreneurs, especially women, from each locality. “It is the most direct way to show that in rural areas there are initiatives of all kinds and a lot of people who fight for their town to have the best possible future. We want them to get to know each other and receive our support and affection”, underlines Roberto Ortega, in charge of directing the programs.

In these first days of the route, 1,100 kilometers will be traveled, to add to the more than 11,000 made in the summers of 2019 and 2020, when the Repopulation Bus traveled through Spain with the slogans of Rural Pride and Rural is the Vanguard.

The Red Eléctrica Group supports this tour for the third consecutive year, to promote the V Repopulation Fair for Rural Spain, Presura21, which will be held in November. It will focus on the fight to stop depopulation in rural areas and support change in the rural areas to encourage sustainable, community-based and ecological development, helping to correct the enormous imbalances that exist between rural and urban life.