The small village of Yátor (Cádiar) in the Alpujarra Granadina now has a bar thanks to a young woman and the Junta de Andalucía.

Yátor is hardly a metropolis as it barely has 100 inhabitants and that number was diminishing because the hamlet didn’t even have a bar, until Noelia Ortega arrived.

She is the daughter of parents who had moved to the Costa Brava decades ago to find work and now after 30 years she’s back to where her family started.

Noelia and her husband, Kevin, who have three children aged four, eight and thirteen, decided to leave everything in Lloret de Mar and start afresh in the Alpujarra.

Yátor was where she was born and even though they had all moved away, every year the family returned during the summer to meet up with relatives. As a child and as an adult she loved the way of life in this Alpujarreño tiny village and yearned to live there.

Soon after her parents, Isabel and Fernando, retired and moved back to Granada, she and her husband decided to follow suit, not only for themselves but to live somewhere wholesome to bring their children up.

They needed to find work and saw a chance to reopen the old pensioners’ bar which had long closed down. Backed by the villagers and the Junta with a business-starter loan for 6,000 euros.

The Junta already has a campaign in place to prevent the loss of inhabitants in rural areas, so this project fitted the bill nicely.

But Noelia and Kevin’s bar, called Torrejón, is more than just somewhere to have a coffee or glass of wine etc; it’s also a sort of social service for the village because they pick up postal packages for their neighbours and other helpful services.

(News/Noticias: Yátor, Cadiar, Alpujarra, Granada, Andalucia)