Chipude, the mid-altitude Gomeran village where homes are inherited but not lived in

A village with more history than inhabitants

Chipude, in the mid-altitude villages of Vallehermoso, combines a pottery-making tradition with a continuing loss of population.

Inherited houses that nobody occupies

The homes belong to descendants who no longer live on the island.

The path to El Cercado, a bond that endures

The historic path symbolises the bond between the two pottery-making villages.

Attempts to retain population through craft activity

Some families are restoring homes linked to pottery-making and rural tourism.

An ancestral pottery tradition that endures

Chipude preserves one of the oldest pottery-making traditions in the Canary Islands, inherited from pre-Hispanic techniques passed down from generation to generation with barely any change. The pieces are made by hand, without a wheel, and fired in the open air following methods documented since before the Castilian conquest of La Gomera. This unbroken craft tradition has made the village an ethnographic point of reference well beyond the island itself. However, this cultural recognition has not always translated into a brake on the village's residential depopulation.

Protected landscape status as a constraint

Much of the area around Chipude falls under landscape protection designations linked to Garajonay National Park and neighbouring natural sites, which limits the scope for extension or new construction. These restrictions, designed to preserve the mid-altitude landscape, also make it harder to renovate old houses that would need substantial work. Owners wanting to restore a family home must comply with strict aesthetic and volume constraints. The result is an ageing housing stock with little scope for updating.

An almost non-existent property market

The handful of sales recorded in Chipude almost always involve inherited homes eventually passed on to buyers outside the original family. Prices remain well below the island average, which occasionally attracts buyers interested in a quiet mid-altitude second home. Local agents acknowledge that supply barely changes from one year to the next, with very few properties listed at any one time. This stagnation makes any sale a locally talked-about event.

Initiatives to attract new residents

Vallehermoso town council has studied ways to support young families wanting to settle in Chipude, tied to craft activity or rural tourism. Some of these initiatives include facilities for renovating empty homes in exchange for commitments to live there permanently. Residents' associations insist that keeping people in the village necessarily means creating economic opportunities linked to pottery and the area's traditional cheese. The stated goal is to stop the village becoming merely a place to visit, with no residential life of its own.