They like their slogans downbeat in the Spanish province of Teruel. First, the local people, tired of being dismissed by the rest of Spain, came up with “Teruel existe” — Teruel exists. Now the village of Miravete de la Sierra is being sold with the line “el pueblo en el que nunca pasa nada” — the village where nothing ever happens.
On a website of that name, a virtual tour of the village is narrated by one of its 12 inhabitants, 86-year-old Cristóbal Sangüesa, who says that this is a place where rush hour comes at around 11am, when people go out to buy bread.
The site, devised by a PR agency, Shackleton, seems less of a serious exercise in rural tourism than an experiment in how quickly the unknown can be made famous. So, while you can help out with the virtual milking of the goats, and buy scale models of the villagers (180 euros each) or roof tiles to help with restoration of the church, it’s a bit harder (at least in any of the browsers I used) to book a stay there.