Rural Squat Meeting in Monars en

The rural squatt meetings 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 squatts,
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 squatt 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
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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