A-Infos (en) The Spanish Robin Hood - Libertarian communist utopia of Marinaleda

When Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo led a farm labourer's raid on a supermarket he was 
redistributing wealth to the poor. You'd expect nothing less from the mayor of the 
communist utopia of Marinaleda ---- 'Utopias aren't chimeras, they are the most noble 
dreams that people have' … Mayor Sánchez Gordillo. Photograph: Cristina Quicler/AFP ---- 
Last week, and not for the first time, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo found himself in the 
Spanish headlines. Dubbed "Robin Hood" by El Pais, Sánchez Gordillo, the mayor of a small 
town in rural Andalusia, led farm labourers into supermarkets to expropriate basic living 
supplies: they filled trolleys with pasta, sugar, chickpeas and milk, left without paying, 
and distributed the loot to local food banks. His reasoning was blunt: "The crisis has a 
face and a name. There are many families who can't afford to eat."

It's hard to overstate how close to the brink Spain is at the moment. Unemployment is at 
25% nationally (higher than Greece), 34% in Andalusia and 53% for 16-to-24-year-olds; 
miners in Asturias are firing homemade rocket launchers at riot police; repossessions and 
the collapse of the construction industry have left 800,000 empty homes, and, last May, 
the 8 million-strong indignados protest movement, a forerunner of Occupy, announced its 
total lack of faith in parliamentary democracy to solve any of these problems. And this is 
just the phoney war: last month, the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, announced spending 
cuts of ¤65bn (£51bn) over the next two years.

In the heart of it all, like Asterix's village in Gaul implausibly holding out against the 
Romans, is Sánchez Gordillo's town, the self-described communist utopia of Marinaleda. 
With a population of 2,600, the town has virtually full employment, communally owned land 
and wage equality. Over the past three decades, the townspeople have built 350 family 
homes with their own hands. Residents pay a "mortgage" of just ¤15 a month towards their 
homes, but have no opportunity to profit from selling them on.
When you first arrive, Marinaleda looks the same as any small town in rural Andalusia, 
with olive groves stretching towards a dusty horizon, children kicking footballs against 
worn stone walls and parasols fluttering gently outside tapas bars. Soon, you begin to 
notice the little differences: the lack of advertising or brand names, the streets named 
for Fermín Salvochea, the 19th-century anarchist mayor of Cadiz, and for Salvador Allende, 
Federico García Lorca and Pablo Neruda.

In the mayor's office hangs a framed portrait of Che Guevara, along with three flags: one 
for Andalusia, one for the Spanish Second Republic (the elected government displaced by 
Franco's military coup), and one sporting the red, white and green of Marinaleda itself; 
it's very clean, and endearingly untidy. In one corner is a flip-chart covered with 
semi-legible marker pen scribbles, bullet points and wonky arrows; this, it transpires, is 
the town's budget.
Sánchez Gordillo was born in Marinaleda in 1949; back then, he explains, it was a town of 
migrant workers. "They would go to Germany, or France; or for two months a year, to the 
wheat fields to the north, to look for work. Otherwise, they were unemployed. It was 
misery. The surroundings were all huge expanses of private land. Andalusia is like Latin 
America: 2% of property owners own 50% of the land."

After Franco's death in 1975, Marinaleda began struggling towards its own definition of 
freedom. Organising around a new trade union, a new workers' party, and with weekly mass 
meetings, the townspeople began occupying some of the land around the village, owned – and 
unused – by the Duke of Infantil. The police would arrest or evict them, and they'd start 
all over again. They blocked roads, broke into and shut down Malaga and Seville airports, 
marched on Madrid, and went on mass hunger strike. Sánchez Gordillo has been to jail seven 
times, and survived two assassination attempts by rightwing extremists.

After 12 years of persistent struggle, with 1992's Seville World Expo just round the 
corner and the regional authorities' resolve finally weakening, incredibly, they won, 
securing 1,200 hectares of the duke's land for their farming cooperative.

"Our union gathers people of many political stripes," Sánchez Gordillo explains, "but we 
carry the torch of anarchism's direct action." He cites 5,000 years of Andalusian struggle 
for land, and thinks for a moment. "Even the weekly assembly is direct action."

The town's relationship with the state is complicated. They are still subject to Spanish 
electoral law (Sánchez Gordillo is re-elected with a huge majority each time), but have 
abolished their police force. "By law, due to the number of inhabitants we have here, we 
should have around four to seven cops," he tells me. "But we don't want police here. 
Because we have our voluntary work, because we fight together, because we make our lives 
together, there is a high degree of coexistence. When we plant trees, we do it together 
too." Sánchez Gordillo's articulation of what "community" can mean is striking, when you 
consider how blithely the word is used by politicians across the west.

"Utopias aren't chimeras, they are the most noble dreams that people have. The dream of 
equality; the dream that housing should belong to everyone, because you are a person, and 
not a piece of merchandise to be speculated with; the dream that natural resources – for 
instance energy – shouldn't be in the service of multinationals, but in the service of the 
people. All those dreams are the dreams we'd like to turn into realities. First, in the 
place where we live, with the knowledge that we're surrounded by capitalism everywhere; 
and later, in Andalusia, and the world."

Leaving the gleaming white town hall building and departing into the dusk, you find a 
metal arch spelling out the slogan OTRO MUNDO ES POSIBLE. Another world is possible. In 
Marinaleda, the words represent not an aspirational mirage, but a statement of fact.
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• Adapted from Utopia and the Valley of Tears: A journey through the Spanish crisis, an 
ebook available from amazon.co.uk from 20 August.
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