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Lucia Benavides

Latest Stories (5)

Abandoned towns in Spain are selling for as little as $100,000

Jun 17, 2019
One real estate company has made a business out of assisting struggling rural towns.
 A man walks through a deserted street in Villacanas, Spain, which was abandoned as the main factory closed in 2012.
Jasper Juinen/Getty Images

Beatlemania is alive and well in the band's hometown of Liverpool

Jan 8, 2019
Growing Beatles tourism has helped other businesses in Liverpool — many hotels, restaurants and shopping centers have opened up in recent years.
PETER SKINGLEY/AFP/Getty Images

To combat Spain's affordable housing crisis, Barcelona has started renting out empty apartments owned by banks

Aug 2, 2018
Spain is in a housing crisis. According to the latest official figures from 2012, around 22,000 people are homeless, though more recent estimates from nonprofits say it could be closer to 40,000. And there’s a surplus of empty homes — hundreds of thousands of apartments owned by banks, repossessed during the country’s financial crisis between […]
Mainly empty apartments are seen in Marina d'Or resort on May 19, 2014 in Oropesa del Mar, Spain.
David Ramos/Getty Images

A rise in foreign industrial trawlers off the coast of Senegal is causing local fishermen to lose their livelihoods

Apr 19, 2018
West Africa loses $1.3 billion a year as a result of illegal fishing from foreign trawlers. Senegal, the country hardest hit, loses $300 million a year, or 2 percent of its GDP.
A beach in Dakar is full of unused pirogues, or wooden fishing boats. Senegal loses an estimated $300 million a year as a result of competition from foreign industrial trawlers that fish off its coast.
Photo courtesy of Zach Campbell

The Spanish Christmas Lottery is a cultural and economic phenomenon

Dec 19, 2017
The Spanish Christmas Lottery, one of the biggest draws in the world, has a payout of over 2 billion euros and a participation rate of 75 percent.
People line up for hours to purchase their Christmas lottery tickets in Spain. About 75 percent of adults in the country participate in the lottery draw each year. 
Zach Campbell/ for Marketplace