For 20 years, Manuel Gozalo has sent busloads of single women on weekend outings across Spain, banking on their charms to help the country’s most rural areas stave off depopulation.



Now – after 260 of his “Caravans of Women” have criss-crossed the country – Spain’s self-styled cupid is facing controversy, with politicians, feminists and 10,000 petition signatories taking aim at what they call a retrograde practice that objectifies women.



They are calling for the cancellation of a caravan due to head from Madrid to just outside of Mérida, in the region of Extremadura, next week.

“Feminists are calling this event sexist,” lamented Gozalo. “But it’s just a meet-up of women and men.”



In 1995, buoyed by the success of his first caravan, he created Asocamu, which takes busloads of women who have paid €20 (£15) to rural Spain for a weekend filled with eating, dancing and matchmaking. Single men interested in meeting these women usually pay about €50 a ticket to participate in the events.

The event in Mérida, said Gozalo, had come under fire because of how it was being promoted. The local partner, Hotel Romero, was promising that the first 55 single men to sign up for the event would be “guaranteed the company of a woman for the lunch, dinner and night of dancing”. So far, about 40 men have signed up.

“People took it the wrong way,” said Gozalo. “We’re just promising company. But it was understood as if the women are going to do more than that.”

A Spanish couple at a cafe. Gozalo estimates that his group has helped 120 couples find lasting love.

More than 10,000 people have signed a petition urging organisers to cancel the event, while local women’s groups, politicians and workers’ unions have expressed dismay about the caravan heading their way.

Marisa Tena, of feminist association Malvaluna, said that while alarm bells had been set off by the publicity, the event as a whole was insulting.



“From the publicity, one would deduce that the women don’t have a right to decide who they will spend their time with or how. Instead that power will reside with the men who paid €50,” she said.

Publicity aside, her group also took issue with the idea of a group objectifying women to promote commercial interests, she said.



“Every woman is free to do what they want, but this doesn’t make it right to hold an event that is negative for women and an insult to everyone else,” she added.

The idea of a caravan of women being dropped off to console lonely men is an antiquated one that belongs in the past, she said, pointing to the 1951 Hollywood western, Westward the Women, that inspired the organisers of the event.



“It took women a lot of work to get to where we are now, why go back to that time?”

Even as criticism mounted, Gozalo vowed that the event would go ahead as planned. The caravans, he said, were no different from clubs that offer women free entry or drinks in hopes of attracting men. Women rarely protest about that kind of special treatment, he claimed.

The women who participate in the caravans do so of their own free will, he said. “You can’t call it sexist because the women are under no obligation. If they meet someone interesting, they meet someone interesting and that’s it.”



The 58-year-old estimated that his group has helped 120 couples find lasting love.

He rejected claims his service was a relic of a time gone by, and said demand was on the up.



“We’re doing more caravans than ever before, more than before the crisis,” he said. Restaurants were keen to partner with him, he said, as they had seen how profitable the caravans could be.



“And filling the buses isn’t a problem, because there’s a lot of women without work who think this will help them.” His model had even been copied by a few other businesses, he said.

The only other gender-based complaint he had ever received had pointed to growing demand, he said.



“Every now and then we would get women in rural areas asking us why we’re not bringing caravans of men for them.”