In an era marked by chronic ecological emergencies, growing social inequalities and barbarism, and the vulnerability of global production systems and chains, reflection on territory, resource management, and collective sovereignty is urgent and fundamental to charting presents that lead us to more just, desirable, and livable futures, relocated to our own land, the one we walk on, the one that truly sustains us and will be able to sustain us. In this context, lands, values, and communal work require special attention, a look to engender possibilities and revisit collective imaginaries that have been able to function differently.
As David Algarra explains in his article 'Communal Forests of the Catalan Countries' published in the journal CaramellaFor centuries, an extensive network of assets and a powerful, deeply rooted communal culture existed in our territory: forests, meadows, pastures, springs, thickets, roads, and lands, managed collectively by local communities. They were not intended for profit, but rather to guarantee the subsistence of all families. The right of employment—of collective use—allowed the use of firewood, pastures, wild fruits, water, or farmland, all under collectively decided rules of conservation and use. In Mallorca, place names such as the commune of Lloret, the commune of Caimari, and the commune of Bunyola, among others, are vestiges of this living, collective past.
Algarra also explains that this management model was systematically dismantled. With the consolidation of modern liberal states, communal lands were parceled out, sold, or appropriated by local oligarchies. Through processes such as the disentailments of the 19th century, the privatization of the commons became the norm. The idea of collective ownership was replaced by that of absolute private ownership. A private ownership that has now been rendered "sacred" by the ultra-neoliberal policies affecting our territory. This is how the communal forms of living, mutual support, and sustenance of life that had characterized the rural world for centuries were profoundly disrupted here in Mallorca, too, as unthinkable as it may seem to us, given the times we live in and how quickly and devastatingly it has been erased from the collective memory.
And it is precisely now, when the territory, in the Islands, is about to suffer one of the most brutal speculative and destructive attacks in history—as the consequences of the great amnesty promoted by the PP-Vox government and the Law on Strategic Land Reserves materialize. And at a time when, in a broader context, the ecosocial crisis demands we rethink the structures that sustain our lives, the proposal to recover the commons becomes a necessity—we could almost say pragmatic. Recovering communal lands, redefining ownership, the commons, the legitimacy of the commons and their collective appropriation, could be a key strategy to confront the logic that continues to drive dynamics of transferring public goods—now public land—for private development and profit. At what point has the manifest irrationality of thinking that this could be a practice that reverses the social and ecological problems of the 99% of society left out of the dynamics of wealth accumulation that tend to commodify and monetize the misfortunes—say, injustices, imbalances of violence—that are the original structural foundations of these same dynamics become normalized?
The reappropriation of the land, the legitimacy of claiming it as the common thing that it is, recovering, recognizing and reinventing if necessary, forms of organization and collective management, recovering the spirit of communal work as a form of political participation, of belonging and mutual care, becomes in this context, in this context. management, exploitation, perversion and instrumentalization. Gladys Tzul Tzul, Guatemalan Quechi sociologist, defines communal work as "a form of government and resistance, oriented towards the sustainability of collective life" And this constitutes a radical alternative.
Thus, we need cracks in the walls of irrationality into which we have turned reason itself, which become the possibility of other worlds, other territories, other societies, desirable and possible, and seeking those sidewalks and widening them is what the Emprius Foundation does and moves with its intention, determination and perseverance. And this is what it promotes with the second edition of its Emprius awards with which they want Recognize initiatives for communal and community ownership, use, and management in Catalan-speaking territories. Initiatives that are inspired by communal tradition not as something archaeological, but as the seed of other possible and desirable presents and futures. Promote critical thinking and ways of doing for a different relationship with the land, work, and life that are in direct and radical opposition to the private, exploitative, and lucrative uses of what belongs to us all and to which we ourselves belong: the land and life itself.
This deep-rooted, collective, and eco-social perspective is shared by many initiatives currently being deployed in our territories: community-based agricultural cooperatives, land stewardship projects, land banks, communal agroecology, recovery of user rights over municipal forests... Projects that... It is essential that these practices do not remain on the periphery, but rather become central to future strategies. Not only because of their social and ecological effectiveness, but because they recover essential values that we must reclaim: co-responsibility and commitment to life.
Recovering the commons is, today, an act of radicalism and hope. It is trusting that as a collective, we are capable of relearning, inventing, caring for what sustains us, and building the alternatives necessary to make this possible.
