RURAL SQUATT MEETING IN Monars Spain

August 2010
The rural squat meeting took place this year on the beginning of july in Monars, a village squatted for 28 years in the high Garrotxa, catalan Pyrenees, spanish side.
Every year it gathers about one hundred persons, mainly coming from rural squats, around topics that are specific to squatting and rural life : collective organisation, material autonomy, « education », health, land struggles, etc. It goes with workshops, discussions and debates, that rythm the day, the subject of this meeting being mainly to see friends, to go further in relationships and to have fun together.
You could see on the advertising board :
- Friday : alternative / continuous workshop on electricity ; workshop discution debate « Questioning monogamia, and its alternatives »
- Saturday : discussion debate « Rural squatting, a movement(s), aims, do we project outside? ; chainsaw worshop, wood tables ; clowns workshop, the art of being yourself ; distillation workshop, Inipi (sweating tents from latin america's indians)
- Sunday : Squatting without car?, presentation and debate on the booklet « the jungle book, emergency book » (el libro de la selva, libreto de emergencias) ; presentation of the integral cooperative (a producer consumer cooperative aiming at getting out of the capitalism dependency, more or less)
There was also a collective work all along the meeting, to dig a pool to have water for an orchard.
All this complemented with a place for children and mothers, an infokiosk with many things, a free expression board, a total auto-organization of the everyday life (with a little help from the inhabitants from times to times, sure). And obviously no prices, just a collective pot for those who wanted and could afford to participate financially, everybody having brought what zhe could of food, material, etc. All this was very great and interesting, so come to the next meetings, it worth it.
Next year it will be in the « Valle d'Arce », in the Pyrenees at the north of Pamplona, where many villages are squatted (Lakabe, Aritzkuren, Rala, Aitzkurgi, Uli Alto and more).
I'd like to add some personal comments, but to say the truth I can't find the words to express the liberty, fullness, simple happiness feeling I experimented during this meeting. Maybe it's because the more I get close to the way of life I want tdo live, the more this feeling goes with me in my everyday life...
So if I've got to squat to have land, if I have to screw the state and it's guardian dogs, if I've to steal to get concrete tools for autonomy, if I have to be a parasite in a society plagued with power abuses and passive submitions, if I have to put myself apart of the World to create my own, I'll gladly do it, even if I make much more fun putting a tomato in earth or taking a beer with my friends.
After all, I believe that ther will be no issue to the struggle as long as we don't live the life we want to fight for.
And so, the collective living, full and intense, based on sharing, solidarity, giving and empathy, with searching material and political autonomy as a basis, seems to me to be the best strategy to buil strong basis for a net of persons that will effectively be able to influence the way the world goes.
The political and ideological influences in reclaim the fields are diverse and make us strong, because if not the anarcho-rural ghettoisation would eat us within a second. I just hope that the exemple of those who choose to live their radicality not dreaming it but putting it in acts will help us to know what we want.
Love and Freedom
Tortuga Feliz