A-Infos (en) Anarkismo.net: Plants recovered and self-management in the new Spanish reality (ca, en, it) [machine translation]

With the financial crisis and economic, the Spanish state has begun to reduce seriously 
its wing. And business closures and layoffs have succeeded-and continues to succeed, 
leaving a trail of unemployed. In the fever of protest and resistance, social change (with 
the self as the central element) is expressed strongly in the year in Spain. --- There are 
only five or six years, talk business or recovered cooperativism in Spain was not only 
handle concepts deeply away from otherwise marginal interests and experiences of the vast 
majority of the population. As part of the company of the financial bubble, unbridled 
consumption and the "feast" of youth, no-or considering only small groups or very 
localized geographically, the need to work for yourself in a horizontal or away from the 
capitalist model.

MondragÃn Marinaleda or were self-management experiences of global dimension, but what is 
certain is that the vast majority of the Hispanic population remained deeply from the 
values ââthat underpinned.

However, it was not always so. Without having to go back as far as the collectivization, 
which arose during the civil war of 1936-39 (which covered a large part of the industry, 
services and agriculture area Republican) in the scenario of the Transition Spanish 
Francoism to democracy in the 70s, the experience of recovery undertaken by its workers 
played a significant role.

It was the time of crisis, fractures and large movements. It was during this period 
qu'ÃmergÃrent experiences such as Numax, plant material electricals self-managed by 
workers in response to the attempted illegal closure of the bosses, whose experience has 
remained embodied in two documentaries JoaquÃm JordÃ: Numax lives and 20 years is not nothing.

Some of the experiences of these years have still survived until today, as the company Mol 
Mactric Barcelona, ââcapable of today chassis of a line of the Barcelona Metro, train and 
hundreds of industrial machinery for companies such as General Motors or printing 
Gramagraf occupied 25 years ago, and now belongs to the editorial group cooperative 
Cultura 03.

But the transition was completed. And it has produced a fiasco. The key principles of the 
Franco regime were kept in what consisted of a single political reform which has 
integrated the country within the European Union and NATO, and if she conceded some civil 
liberties, n ' has not challenged the fundamental mechanisms of distribution of economic 
and social power. The great popular movements have collapsed and the "disenchantment" and 
cynicism have replaced experimentation and struggle. Self-management proposals yet never 
disappeared, but they were relegated to a purely marginal space.

And so it was for the company of the financial bubble and unbridled and irresponsible 
consumption remained vigor. How? Based on credit and over-exploitation of immigrant labor 
and youth with precarious working conditions and compliance with legislation relating to 
foreign status, activity and no hidden fees is (in fact ) developed.

With the arrival of the financial crisis and current economic structures and alter all 
evolved: the explosion of unemployment reaching extreme levels never seen before in 
Spanish society and the rapid deterioration of the productive and entrepreneurial to the 
bursting of the housing bubble-generated radically new situation which involved the 
beginning of major economic but also social and cultural.

Unemployment and poverty compelled a new broad layers of the population to the hidden 
economy and the collection of meager grants a state of well-being, which never managed to 
develop in Spain at a level equivalent to the central countries of Europe.

Extremes (more precisely, extremists) adjustments implemented by the government with the 
outbreak of the debt crisis generated by the external socialization of private debt of 
financial institutions, led to the effect that we must wait: the Spanish State has become 
a huge economic wasteland where closures have succeeded and where large sectors of the 
population began to be excluded from productive activity.

It is in this context that the success of the May 15, 2011 and broke the "Indignant 
Movement" burst with force and the first attempts massive resistance were expressed about 
the process of social decomposition imposed by the dynamic neoliberal EU and Spanish 
governments.

Therefore, the architecture company policy is again an element debated and discussed 
publicly. The policy has recovered some centrality in everyday conversations and in the 
spirit of a majority of the population. Speak now mobilizations, strength or social 
transformation (with self as the central element) is again possible.

Already in the previous months, full deployment of the crisis, the seeds and the seeds of 
this new situation had developed. And the use of recovery taken by their workers had 
become credible.

In this sense, at the very beginning of the crisis, nearly 40 companies had been recovered 
and returned by workers operating under cooperative status, as claimed by the 
Confederation of Worker Cooperatives (COCETA). Among them, we can relate experiences such 
as the Zero-business automation Pro PorriÃo (Pontevedra -'s note: Galicia) or the 
furniture layout of kitchen Cuin Factory in Vilanova i la Geltrà (Barcelona) in which the 
former chief was actively involved in the transformation and cooperative, where all 
workers are assigned a salary equal to 900 euros. The metallurgical company Talleres Socar 
in Sabadell (note: Outskirts of Barcelona) was also self-management with the support of 
the owner and converted into cooperative Mec 2010.

But probably the most striking initiative and has been known to start by ex-employees of 
national circulation newspaper PÃblico, which stopped being published in print February 
23, 2012, leaving 90% its workers on the street. These have been cooperative MÃs PÃblico, 
which attempts to obtain a social and financial support to continue publishing the 
newspaper monthly version.

However, despite all these experiences, we can not assume that the path to recovery 
business has become something natural or developed: workers in situations closing 
massively continue to meet their social benefits offers a State Welfare increasingly weak 
and contested. Difficulties related to the legal status of cooperatives in the Spanish 
law, as well as the virtual absence of forecasts from the Act award, combined with a 
certain passivity fueled by decades of speculative universe and conformist, brakes are 
probably the recovery strategy.

This certainly seems increasingly clear is the growing use of cooperativism from many of 
unemployed before the productive anomie and lack of expectations to find a job, the 
ability to use capitalize provision of dismissal to create self-managed enterprises. There 
are countless examples (such as the cooperative renewable electricity Som Energia, created 
in December 2010) and, in some cases, they demonstrate clear links with social movements 
(such as those relating to the implementation experiences created image or likeness to the 
Cooperative Catalan Ultimate, or those of the libertarian milieu, such as printing 
graphics Tinta Negra - Black Ink). Indeed, between January and March 2012, 223 new 
cooperatives were created in the Spanish State.

There is no doubt. New roads are being driven (note: plots) by the Spanish company. And, 
among these, the path of self begins to be increasingly common.

Josà Luis Carretero

Member of the Institute of Economics and Self-Management - ICEA. Madrid
_________________________________________
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