By embracing the gay community, Campillo de Ranas Mayor Francisco Maroto has bucked a national trend of rural depopulation.

The openly gay mayor has revitalized his small town by making it a gay-friendly destination for weddings. In fact, before 2005, no one had been married in the town for 35 years. Since then, Maroto has officiated more than 100 weddings, approximately one-third of which were for gay couples.

The Independent reports:

“At first my idea was to offer people the chance to get away from priests, and marry in beautiful, rural surroundings in a warm, civil ceremony.

“Then, when same-sex marriage became legal, many mayors refused to carry out homosexual weddings, but I said ‘I am gay and I’ll promote gay weddings on principle’,” he says.

That political gesture grew into a development opportunity as Campillo’s fame spread as a venue for original and relaxed, even outrageous, weddings. Mr Maroto has presided over a medieval-costumed wedding and a Lord of the Rings-themed wedding (dressed as Gandalf).

Mr Maroto is not at home, but gladhanding runners in a half-marathon in the Ocejon foothills. Locals from seven hamlets in the municipality of Campillo (population 250) down beer and chorizo from trestles after a yomp across the hills.

“This village was seriously ill, dying, but now people are coming to live here,” says Fernando Barbero, 58, a hillclimber and trade unionist. “It’s changed a lot. It used to be elitist, the local strongman decided everything. Now it’s more consensual. I completely approve our option for gay weddings. Even conservatives accept it as something normal, and a way to bring life back to the village.”

Juana Hombrados, 82, a lifelong shepherd, beams as she joins her fitter neighbours. “Gay people have as much right to set up home and be happy as everyone else,” she says. “I only became aware of homosexuals when my daughter Pilar started working for a fashion designer. Then I got to know Paco [Francisco Maroto] because he has sheep, and we coincided on the hillside.”

Mrs Hombrados’s daughter Pilar Peinado is deputy mayor, and conducted the wedding last month of Mr Maroto and his partner of 14 years, Quique Rodriguez.