The sad empty side of Portugal

Portugal isn't a large country. This country, which is practically the same size of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, is known more for its main cities like Porto and Lisbon. But if you draw a line on its edges, you see places that people know more, which is the places on the green side of the map. But Portugal's interior is very little known, and worse, and it's very little habitated. So in this video I traveled through the interior of this country, visiting isolated villages in the mountains, showing places that even resemble Switzerland, but also entire places completely abandoned. A sad sight of this country. So what are people doing in these villages? Like this Portuguese who bought half of a village for a very good price and he's reconstructing the whole place and much more. So welcome to another video and don't forget to subscribe. And our journey begins in this village called Almeida. I found it very cool because this village has this star shape when you view from above. A lot of people know Portugal by the coast. Cities like Lisbon, Porto Braga, Algarve. But people forget about the inland of Portugal, and this area is really different from the coast. Here you have way less people, you have a lot of abandoned villages, and a lot of different villages, like this one. And the entrance of this village is quite different and very beautiful. Look at that, you have all these gates really high up and this, I think there used to be like a water here, underneath here, and you have all these cannons as well for protection, because this place is only nine kilometers from Spain. This star shape was made to protect the village from attacks. The enemy would have nowhere to hide and there would be no blind spots. The first thing you notice is first, really pretty village, but second, it's really empty. Look, there's no one there on the other street there. There's no one behind me, no one over there, no one. So yeah, this is life in here. Empty, quite peaceful actually. And look how pretty and different that is. They write the number on the walls, like one, two, three, four. And entering this village, you can see how old but well preserved it is. There are many places like this in the interior of Portugal. It's a very complete place. It has post office, pharmacy, hotel, library, but you can tell the life there is really calm. That's why young people end up going to big cities or even going to other countries. That's why Portugal has the highest immigration rate in the whole Europe. Calm life. If you like this lifestyle, northern Portugal is for you. Here there are many mountains, like for example Serra da Estrela, which even has snow every year. And there we found Peodão, a village that looks like it's from the Swiss Alps. Welcome to Peodão. It was not very easy to get here. A lot of roads going up and down, but yeah, it's very worth it. Look at, look at this place, look at this landscape. All these houses, like the roof, is all made with slates. It's like those Switzerland villages in the middle of the mountain, the valley, with this river passing by. I'm amazed how everything is made by the same material, all the way to the top and also the floors. And look at the size of this door. You have to be on your knees to get in the house. Seriously, I've never seen anything like this in my life. The funny thing is that walking through this village, I met some Portuguese who also live in Porto. And talking to them, I mentioned that it was really close to get to this village. For me, like two hours and a half is really close. But for them, two hours and a half is super far away. So it's funny to see what's close or not for certain people. This is something I like about these mountain villages, like Switzerland. You have all this water coming from the mountain, the purest water you're gonna ever drink in your life. Instead of buying water in the supermarkets, you get this one for free and it's even better. What I liked about these villages are the prices. In this village of Almeida, Ada and I had a very good lunch with wine and dessert and half chicken for only 10 euros each. And here in Peodão, I found it funny because I ordered coffee and Ada ordered a glass of wine. And the glass of wine was cheaper than coffee, costing only 80 cents. Alright, we've seen some very beautiful villages so far, but it doesn't reflect the reality. In Portugal, there are many villages that are semi-empty or even abandoned. In my research, I found this village called Covilho do Monte. Because it has been abandoned for over 50 years, it was put up for sale. But I think no one bought it because it remains abandoned. Right, after hours on the road, there's no more road. As you can see, we are in the middle of these treadmills, windmills? Windmills, did I say? Windmills over here. Super cold, in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing here around. Just small villages far away. But let's go to this lost village called Covilho do Monte. A couple meters down there. Let's see. It's been a few minutes. Are we walking? That's the windmill over there. It's quite hard to walk on these stones. Over there, there's a sign for a sanctuary, like a sacred place or something. And you can start to see the houses. We just got to the sacred place. It's just a stone. There you can see the view. Man, look, places like this can be very spirited and stuff. Abandoned village. Why was this abandoned, you know? Yeah, let's go. Let's check it out. So, welcome to Covilho do Monte. It's a place that has been 50 years since no one lives here. And that's why they put this place to sell. The whole village on the market. I saw in some news it was 4 million euros. Another news it was like 1 million. I don't think it's worth that much. But anyway, it's a very apocalyptic scenario, like Machu Picchu. Yeah, let's go check it out. I confess I was a little scared. I don't know if I was afraid of spirits or crackheads. But right away I saw that it is a very beautiful village. If you stop to think, this in a renovation would be incredible village. I think now we are in the middle of the village. It goes down there. It's a big village. It goes down there, all the way up there as well that we came from. All these big houses made by stones. And maybe there are some people that come here now and then because there are some really fresh shit of like horses, horse shit or something. Let's go further more. Let's see. Walking around I counted about 12 houses. And that's a lot. If there were 12 families there, it would be about 40 people living in there. I wonder how this place became like this. They're very good houses and it's a very calm and charm place. And if you saw this video and want to buy the village, I want my commission. And this idea of buying a village is a very good idea because in my research I found this guy's video. He simply bought half a village with several houses for a value that I think is really good. 100,000 euros. So I did an interview with him online. We transformed all these houses that we bought in a rural housing. In a housing village. That is, people will be able to stay there as tourists, stay in the village, get to know the surroundings. But our goal is undoubtedly that this project, this investment that we are going to do, together with the local population, we can really contribute so that there is more work, be it directly in the people who will work with us, be it directly in the restaurants, in the bakeries, anyway. And thus give our contribution so that there is less abandonment of these rural regions. One thing I found really interesting in Portugal are the prices of these places in the interior. I have visited a plot of land of 1,000 square meters and it was for sale for only 1,400 euros. Of course the land was in a preserved area so you can't really build anything there, but you can build stuff that are removable. But 1,400 euros is really cheap. I also visited another plot of land of 1,000 square meters as well, but it had a tiny home in there. A really small house in a very flat terrain for only 6,000 euros. And this is not hard to find. These prices really exist. You just have to access the websites here like OLX or Facebook Marketplace or Idealista to find these places and this is not sponsored. Portugal is much more than just big cities. Here there are many opportunities in the interior, which is also very beautiful as you can see, but unfortunately suffers from this abandonment. Well, this was the interior of Portugal and I'll see you in the next place. Don't forget to subscribe!