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For sale. Village in Spain. Needs work. Price €45,000… It sounds like somebody’s idea of a joke – or a dream.

But these astonishing offers are coming up all the time as crisis-hit Spaniards sell off property that has been in the family for generations.

Their sun-kissed country is dotted with abandoned villages, like ghost towns in films of the old Wild West.

And nearly a third of the foreigners buying them up are Britons, according to Spanish estate agents.

The Sunday People can reveal that one such adventurer is former ITV transmission controller Neil Christie, 61, who snapped up the tiny village of Arruñada, bordering Asturias and Galicia in the north west.

The dad-of-two, originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, has to pinch himself sometimes when he thinks of the price he paid – “45,000”.

“That’s euros,” he added with a smile. “Not pounds.”

Now he spends his day fixing up the detached property he and his Peruvian wife Rosa will soon call home.

The house overlooks nearly nine acres of land which are all theirs. Back in Britain they were living in a town house in Carlisle, Cumbria.

Their new home was ­abandoned at least 27 years ago. Neil bought it in 2005 after falling in love with the area ­during a holiday with Rosa.

His first job had been at Swan Hunter Shipyard in Newcastle, where he learned about welding, riveting and electronics. Those skills have stood him in good stead and he believes he can get the four new homes into shape for a total of less than £140,000.

Neil said: “My wife walked away saying, ‘I’ll leave it to you,’ when I saw this village and decided it’s where I wanted to see out the rest of my life.

“That was probably because a tree was growing right through the middle of our front room and it didn’t have a roof. But she’s as excited about the project now as I was then.

“She’s moved here and is working as a teacher. We’re living in a ­cottage in a village a 10-minute drive away while I get this house ready.

“It’s not a decision for the faint-hearted. The village was a ruin to start with.

“I had to bulldoze down the walls of this first house and rebuild them up again using the original stone.

“I’ve spent most of the last four years renovating it and I’m still 18 months away from ­finishing. I haven’t even touched the house next door, apart from clearing it out a bit.

(Image: Solarpix)

“But apart from when I’m running out of tea bags there’s absolutely ­nothing I miss. The work I did in England could be very stressful. I found it difficult to relax at times.

“Here I’ve got zero pollution, fresh air and fresh water and I haven’t had to bankrupt myself to get it.”

As Neil works, the only noise comes from his paint-stained radio and the gentle lowing of a few cows.

His water comes from a mountain stream crossing the village.

Many of Spain’s abandoned villages are so small they would barely be called hamlets in Britain. Typically they were deserted by tenants who moved to towns

and cities or more fertile areas for work.

Now British bargain hunters are at the forefront of a takeover of the ­nation’s rural retreats. But lovers of sun, sea and sangria should realise few of them are near the Costas.

Most of the properties are in rough but breathtaking terrain closer to the Atlantic than the Med.

The lack of mod cons is reflected in the price. The ­majority of the deserted villages are in the northern regions Asturias and Galicia, branded Green Spain by British travel agents, where the locals are incredibly welcoming and the food is fabulous. Prices range from £53,000 to £385,000.

Rafael Canales, who specialises in selling the sites, said: “This year ­foreigners have bought 80 per cent of what we’ve sold and around 30 per cent of those have been British.”

Barcelona-born Rafael and his ­business partner Pepe Rodil run the website aldeasabandonadas.com, Spanish for abandoned villages.

Rafael added: “The average buyers we see are middle-class couples in their 50s who are buying now with the idea of moving here when they retire.

“Before, more people were buying villages to do up and turn into tourist concerns. Now we find 70 per cent want to come and live in them.

“They want to use the biggest house as theirs and the others as guest houses for their friends and family.

“We think it’s a market with a healthy future ahead of it. Prices are low now but they’re going to double and triple over the next 10 years.” Pepe, an engineer who travelled the world before returning to his native Galicia, said: “Spaniards are selling these villages off because they need the money with the economic crisis.

“Often the houses have been in their families for generations but they’ve fallen into disrepair.

(Image: Solarpix)

“They either haven’t the money to do them up or they don’t want to ­because they see going back to the countryside that their fathers and grandfathers left as a backwards step.

“Foreigners are filling the gap. I’m happy to see villages which were falling down being renovated. It makes me sad to see them in ruins.”

Rafael and Pepe have been finding buyers for 95 per cent of the villages for sale around Spain and for nearly everything on offer in the north west.

One of the most expensive opportunities on their books is El Costal, on sale for £385,000. That is £10,000 less than the average price of a London flat.

But as lord and master of El Costal you will get 60 acres of land, stunning views over an estuary separating Galicia from Asturias and five residential ­buildings – ­including a main home which needs painting, ­polishing and some roof work. The cheapest hamlet is Peña Bella with its four houses and a traditional granary built on more than three acres of woodland. It is going for £53,000.

The main house has a tree growing in it and one of the smaller houses is barely visible through the undergrowth.

But it doesn’t stop Pepe pointing through the weeds and broken windows at the biggest house with the enthusiasm of a salesman on a winning streak. He said: “The walls are fine. They just need a clean-up. You’ve got 200 square metres here. It would make a really great four-bedroom home for someone.”

Pepe is an estate agent – a profession whose use of expressions such as charming, compact and even four bedrooms can be stretching the truth.

But he talks with confidence because he has put his own money where his mouth is. Thirteen years ago Pepe set about renovating an abandoned village.

The place was in ruins but he was determined to do something special after inheriting part of it from his parents. He bought up the other two houses and turned the lot into fantastic holiday homes with wifi and satellite TV.

Guests have included footballers and politicians. Now he has now decided to put the five houses and surrounding land on the market for £1.4million.

Pepe said: “This is what I tell people they can turn their abandoned villages into. I sometimes bring them here after they see the properties in ruins.

“I’m not going to say what I spent on renovating mine. But it was obviously a lot less than the asking price.”