THE last two remaining inhabitants in a Teruel-province village are the stars of the show in a new TV advert.
Martín and Sinforosa have lived in La Estrella, a Hamlet with a population of two, all their lives, and have had no neighbours for 35 years.
“It’s quite a lot, isn’t it?” Martín says in the new Land Rover advert.
The couple was interviewed by the regional newspaper, El Heraldo de Aragón, four years ago and the surprising features of their day-to-day revealed in the story are now shown on the television commercial.
“Our son doesn’t want us to live here, but at the moment we’re in good health and we don’t want to move,” Sinforosa explains.
Now in their late 80s, Sinforosa and Martín have watched their friends, neighbours and family gradually leaving the village, where they live without running water or electricity.
They have to go to a pump every day and carry vats of water home – but this does not bother them.
For power, they rely on a generator, and they do not even have a clock – to find out the time, they use a sundial.
To get to the next village, let alone a town of any reasonable size, they have to drive a minimum of 24 kilometres along very narrow, winding forestry roads and mountain passes with sheer drops alongside them.
But La Estrella has not always been this way – Martín and Sinforosa met there when they were only just 18, at a dance at one of the two taverns then trading in the village, owned by ‘Auntie Benedita’ and ‘Auntie Consuelo’, as they were known locally.
“We’ve grown up here and we’re not at all tempted to leave for somewhere else,” says the couple, who have been together for 70 years.
“Here, we’ve always had a wonderful life, looking after each other and our animals.”
