My apartment in exchange for a village

This week, new ads have appeared for entire villages for sale at five hundred thousand euros. I confess: I'm one of those people who spends time looking at these ads, driven by a kind of fascination, a dream, and awe all at once. "Should we sell our apartment and move there?" I often ask my family, knowing I'm suggesting the impossible.

An economist wonders: how can an entire village be worth the same as my eighth-floor apartment in Barcelona's Eixample district? A real village. Six or eight houses, some in ruins, others half-renovated, streets, a square… Sometimes without electricity; other times, with it only partially installed. Fields, hectares, paths, silence. All for less than the price of an eighth-floor interior apartment, without an elevator, overlooking an interior courtyard where the sun never shines.

The easy explanation is the same as always: supply and demand. Where there are people, there are prices. Where there aren't, there aren't. But that explanation falls short. Because what's valued in an apartment in a big city isn't just the property itself. It's the livable environment, full of amenities: schools, hospitals… Access to work, to services, to the network of exchanges. Cities are dense hubs of exchange. People who offer services, who consume those of others, who create cross-cutting opportunities.

Ultimately, what you buy in the city isn't square meters, but possibilities. An empty town is economically inert. It doesn't generate exchange, it doesn't generate income, it doesn't generate expectations. It has no activity. Hence its price.

This is where it's worth revisiting an old, almost forgotten idea: the phalanstery. Those 19th-century projects envisioned self-sufficient communities with internal production, services, and a cooperative logic. Many failed, others survived, but all stemmed from a sound intuition: an economy doesn't originate from an individual, but from an organized group.

A town can start out as a closed economy: a few families exchanging basic services, producing something, generating a small local GDP. And then, very quickly, it opens up to the outside world. Exporting what it knows how to do. Attracting visitors, customers, and activity. That's how almost all cities were born before they became cities.

Empty villages don't need grand projects. They need people willing to build economic community where none exists today. These listings aren't just for a private investor looking to develop a rural tourism business with a golf course. They're opportunities for groups of adventurers.

Courageous individuals willing to create new exchange hubs outside the usual places. It's difficult, but not impossible. At least, not economically. Being willing to make an effort of this magnitude is another matter entirely. Hence these prices.