When somebody dies in firmly sewing Duruelo de la Sierra, the complete community strolls from the church service to the cemetery, accompanying the expired to their last resting place. In times of pandemic, fair a couple of relatives are allowed.

“You are used to seeing a funeral with lots of people,” said Alberto Abad, a 54-year-old carpenter who’s also the mayor and sees the virus as tearing at his town’s social texture. “It touches you because you know all the people who live here.” Spain has been one of the hardest-hit nations within the widespread, with more than 25,600 affirmed deaths, agreeing to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. But whereas Madrid has been the epicenter of the suffering, each death within the countryside may be a woefully felt blow for struggling villages.

Duruelo de la Sierra lies in Spain’s north-central area of Soria, one of Europe’s most sparsely populated zones, home to shrinking communities amid a landscape dotted by deserted villages. 

Numerous in these dwindling villages and towns thought their sparse populations would shield them from the coronavirus pandemic. Soria’s generally high percentage of older adults and restricted health care assets made conditions for COVID-19 to have a particularly devastating effect on communities that indeed before were struggling to survive.

Duruelo de la Sierra, a lumber town of 1,000 that’s battling to fight off termination from depopulation, is surrounded by green hills of pine forests, cows and sheep, as well as the stone, remains of overlooked homesteads. Duruelo de la Sierra usually sees one or two deaths per month and around 20 in a year, according to the mayor. From Feb. 26 to April 2, there were 13. Five of the dead had tried positive for the virus and others are suspected of having contracted it.

Similar tragedies are playing out throughout Soria and other parts of Spain’s rural interior.