Moralina (also called Moralina de Sayago) is a municipality located in the

province of Zamora Zamora () is a province of western Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is bordered by the provinces of Ourense, León, Valladolid, and Salamanca, and by Portugal. The present-day province of Zamora w ...

Castile and León Castile and León ( es, Castilla y León ; ast-leo, Castiella y Llión ; gl, Castela e León ) is an autonomous community in northwestern Spain. It was created in 1983, eight years after the end of the Francoist regime, by the merging of the ...

, Spain. According to the 2004

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...

(

INE INE, Ine or ine may refer to: Institutions * Institut für Nukleare Entsorgung, a German nuclear research center * Instituto Nacional de Estadística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional de Estatística (disambiguation) * Instituto Nacional Elec ...

), the municipality has a population of 346 inhabitants. It is away from the city of Zamora. The village belongs to the

Sayago Sayago is a ''comarca'' (county, but with no administrative role) in the province of Zamora in central Spain. Geography The ''comarca'' is located at the southwest of the Zamora Province. The main geographical characteristic is the isolatio ...

county or

comarca A ''comarca'' (, or , or ) is a traditional region or local administrative division found in Portugal, Spain and some of their former colonies, like Brazil, Nicaragua, and Panama. The term is derived from the term ''marca'', meaning a "march, ...

, and participates in the association Sayagua, which supplies the water and the recycling system in the whole county, as the municipies are too small and weak to maintain this kind of services by themselves. The dominating landform in the area is the

peneplain 390px, Sketch of a hypothetical peneplain formation after an orogeny. In geomorphology and geology, a peneplain is a low-relief plain formed by protracted erosion. This is the definition in the broadest of terms, albeit with frequency the usage ...

, with some streams eroding the surface in their path to the '' arribe'', the canyon located at the east of the municipality. There are two old '' dehesas'' (an Iberian traditional form of pasturelands) called "Trabanquina" and "Requejo". Both, as many in this county, were sold to the municipalities between the 18th 19th centuries, and distributed among the inhabitants. That has disfigured the characteristics of both ''dehesas'', changing the type of holding from a large estate to a small holding. The economy is based in agriculture and

husbandry Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starti ...

(especially cows and sheep). Within last few years

rural tourism Rural tourism is a tourism that focuses on actively participating in a rural lifestyle. It can be a variant of ecotourism. Many villages can facilitate tourism because many villagers are hospitable and eager to welcome or host visitors. Agriculture ...

has provided a new and hopeful source of income since the surrounding areas were declared as a natural reserve, called

Arribes del Duero Natural Park Arribes del Duero Natural Park is a protected area in western Spain, covering 106.105 ha in the autonomous community of Castile and León. In this area the river Duero forms the national boundary between Spain and Portugal, and the Portuguese sid ...

. This declaration was justified by the high ecological value of the river Duero canyons (called "Arribes" in

). Although is suffering the effects of the general depopulation that involves the rural areas of the province, it is one of the most actives villages in the Sayago county. One example of this activity is the craft fair that takes place on every 15 August. Statistics show the mentioned depopulation since the

rural flight Rural flight (or rural exodus) is the migratory pattern of peoples from rural areas into urban areas. It is urbanization seen from the rural perspective. In industrializing economies like Britain in the eighteenth century or East Asia in the ...

started in Spain in the 1960s:

References

Municipalities of the Province of Zamora Sayago {{Zamora-geo-stub