Forty years of solitude: the romantic story of the elderly couple who live in the abandoned village of La Estrella

    A life without television, without electricity, without telephone and without running water: it is that of Juan Martin Colomer and Sinforosa Sancho, husband and wife in their eighties, who for over forty years have been the only inhabitants of the ghost town of La Estrella, in Spain.

    He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

    A life without television, without electricity, without telephone and without running water: it is that of John Martin Colomer and Synphorus Sancho, husband and wife in their eighties, who for over forty years they have been the only inhabitants of the ghost town of La Estrella, in Spain.





    We are not in the pages of a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but in an abandoned village, about twenty-five kilometers of curves, hills and solitude from the nearest inhabited center, the small village of Mosqueruela, in Aragon.

    The days of Sinforosa and Martin (protagonists of a short but intense documentary, The Last Two) begin with sunrise and end at sunset, and are occupied by walks towards the source, to get water, and from care of the garden and their animals - three dogs, four chickens, a rooster, about twenty-five cats and some bees. Until a few years ago, the couple also owned about twenty horses: Martin, in fact, has always worked as a breeder and farmer, since he was a child.

    Forty years of solitude: the romantic story of the elderly couple who live in the abandoned village of La Estrella

    Occasionally, on board an old car, the Colomers go to the town of Villafranca del Cid, to visit their son's family and to make some purchases or some medical checks. Sinforosa and Martin own a house in Villafranca: but for the moment, still feeling healthy and able to fend for themselves, they prefer to continue living in La Estrella, despite the contrary opinion of the son.

    "We grew up here and have no reason to live anywhere else." - explains Sinforosa - “Here we are beautifully, we take care of each other and of our animals. We do not take drugs and we eat what we want. "

    Their days pass largely in silence and solitude, broken only, from time to time, by the voice of a radio, which represents their only link with the outside world. Sinforosa and Martin seem to live a life of other times: simple, frugal but, all in all, happy.



    The decline of the village of La Estrella, which a little over a century ago was populated by several hundred people and counted houses, schools, taverns and cafes, began at the end of the XNUMXth century, when a violent flood killed many inhabitants and destroyed dozens of houses. Since then, the village has slowly begun to depopulate, also due to the seismicity of the area and its isolation, which led the youngest to seek work and fortune in the cities.

    When Sinforosa and Martin met after the Spanish Civil War, the population of La Estrella had already dwindled to 150 or 200 inhabitants. At first, Martin would have liked to follow the example of his peers and move elsewhere, but Sinforosa was firmly against the idea of ​​leaving the village where she was born and raised. And in the end Martin decided to stay close to her, giving up the possibility of a different life and becoming a sort of hermit with her when, over forty years ago, they were the only inhabitants of the country.

    Forty years of solitude: the romantic story of the elderly couple who live in the abandoned village of La Estrella

    In their story, which speaks of love - not only of conjugal love, but also of love for the land, for one's roots, for one's own history - there is also the tragedy of a daughter who died when she was only twelve, due to an embolism: a wound that seems to have strengthened their bond with the small abandoned village and with the past.

    And who knows that even Sinforosa and Martin are not worth the words with which, in One hundred years of solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez described the life of the last two survivors of the Buendia lineage.


    "In that Macondo forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so persistent that it was hard to breathe, enclosed by loneliness and love and the loneliness of love in a house where it was almost impossible to sleep for the noise of the red ants, Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula were the only happy beings, and the happiest on earth. "


    Lisa Vagnozzi

    Photo Credits

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