RÁBADE, Spain — After a decade of working on luxury cruise ships in the Bahamas, Jeff King, 60, and Claudia Weber, 50, decided they’d had enough of Caribbean sun, tourism and mosquitoes.

A former ship’s captain and a cook, they decided to drive around northern Spain in search of a quiet place to settle down — an old farmhouse, perhaps, or an abandoned mill.

When they stumbled across an entire ruined hamlet up for sale, they were smitten.

“As soon as we saw this place,” Mr. King said, “we stopped looking.”

Their decision two years ago to buy an entire village is still rare, but getting less so.

For less than 300,000 euros, or about $336,000, they bought a cluster of crumbling stone houses with slate roofs, set on 12 acres of woodland dotted with chestnut, oak and apple trees.