My take on a determined and strong-willed group of people who demand liberty from the state and have decided to practice a new model of living in a little Spanish village called Marinaleda: The population is only around 2,700, but these revolutionary farmers have created something pretty special.
I think I first heard of the place through a chat with a bloke in a pub... He was raving about this place he'd passed through while he was touring Europe on his motorbike. At first I wasn't all that interested in the village - I wanted to hear more about his tales of firery Spanish señoritas and about the pristine beaches of Portugal, but he kept coming back to it. His brief stay there had obviously had a pretty huge impact on the way he thought about society. For him (known to dabble in the illegal from time to time) the idea of no police was what first interested him, but he quickly found more to like...
He told me about how the new model of living practiced in Miranaleda was first implemented in the early 80's. Apparently it started (like all good revolutions) when things became too desperate for the local community to keep living the way they had been. Unemployment was at outrageous levels: to pay for food and shelter the farmers had had to sell their land. People were literally starving.
So they occupied some land and demanded it be given to them. When, after a decade of struggle, strikes, and occupation the government finally caved and gave them the land, they started farming again.
In a move which might just be genius, but which goes against so much of what we in the West are taught, the villagers planted things that require intensive tending by humans. They did this to ensure that there was as much work as possible. This is so utterly contradictory to the neo-liberal, capitalist dogma of efficiency that it took me a while to see it as a positive action. Having had some time to digest it, and learned more about the village, I now think it is brilliant.
Let's take a look at the rest of the region of Andalucia and compare how people today are doing there... A quick google tells me that things are still pretty bad for most of the people of Andalucia (unemployment is currently around 30% in the region, and even higher for young people at about 55%) (https://laboureconomics.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/alarming-unemployment-rate-in-spain-%E2%80%93-focus-on-andalusia/) but in Miranaleda, things are looking pretty bright: Full employment.
How about housing? Well there are about 100,000 empty homes in the region. http://www.terrameridiana.com/blog/464-new-property-map-of-empty-properties-in-spain.html
How many in the village? None! And that's not all, there are 0 homeless people in the village. If you want to build a house, the local town hall provides you with land and lets you build for free. Then you would pay 15 euros per month (and have to agree you won't sell the place for private gain)
I read a few recent articles about the place before making this post and have found out something that makes me love the place even more... After the global economic downturn of 2008, the mayor of the village (who became known as the "Spanish Robin Hood") organised a series of raids of supermarkets. Him and his villagers walked out of these supermarkets with basics like rice, oil and bread, which they then took to a local food bank so that it would be given to those most in need of it. This is the sort of direct action I can really get behind personally!
Some people might call these guys communitists, I would call them communitarians. Is this kind of community the sort of place you'd like to live? It certainly sounds like it would be appealing to the thousands of homeless across America, or the millions of unemployed all across the struggling European nations like Greece and Spain...