View source for Feria de la Economia Social y Solidaria



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Janosch Sbeih:

"I was lucky enough that my stay in Madrid coincided with “La Feria de la Economia Social y Solidaria
– Madrid”, a trade fair and convention of the local social and solidarity economy (La Feria, 2014).

This two-day event took place for the second time with the first one being held the year before in
2013. The event offered an interesting crosscut between intellectual debates and presentations, a
“social market” that offered sustainably produced local goods and a trade fair in which over 100
organisations related to the Madrilenian social and solidarity economy presented themselves and
established connections between each other. For my research purposes, this event proved to be a
lucky coincidence as it visualised the diversity of Madrid’s new economy in one focal space. The
exhibited organisations ranged from producer and service cooperatives of all sorts to alternative
financial institutions, local currency and umbrella networks, research and advocacy groups, fablabs,
community projects, and solidarity initiatives.

First of all, I was struck by the diversity of cooperatives which is certainly due to Spain’s
historically strong cooperative sector, as for example in contrast to Greece where such a sector and
organisational culture needs to be built nearly from scratch. Besides the traditional producers’
cooperatives I find especially remarkable that also the modern 21st century knowledge and service
economy begins to “cooperatise”. Examples of such a new kind of innovative cooperatives range
from a juridical lawyer’s network that specialises in work and consultancy for the alternative
economy and social movements like 15M, over design, communication and market research
cooperatives, to a network of therapists who combine psychological and philosophical insights to
counsel their clients through these challenging times of change. What I find especially relevant in the
current ‘crisis-context’ are the many examples of groups of unemployed individuals who form a
cooperative together to offer such services as commercial cleaning, printing, gardening, house and
bike repairs, elderly and nursing care, craftsmanship and building maintenance collectively. These
cooperatives mostly offer a range of services in a particular sector like building maintenance
collectively to have a bigger public image and more appeal to enterprises as an organisation. The 
groups consist mostly of four to eight individuals and told me that they would take on more people if
there was enough work, but they often struggle already to keep their current members sufficiently
occupied. Still, it is a good example of how people group together in a crisis to help themselves and
each other as they collectively have a higher capacity to “surf the crisis” (Cardoso & Jacobetty,
2012).

The supportive networks to start and sustain a new social enterprise in Madrid are impressive.
There are many cooperatives that offer help in setting up new enterprises by providing expertise,
working space, legal support and start-up capital. Contrary to the formal economy where credit
lending froze up during the crisis, finance institutions in the Spanish social and solidarity economy
seem impervious to the global financial crisis and continue to provide loans for projects that
correspond to their ethical standards (Conill et al., 2012). This holds true for ethical banks like FIARE
as well as credit cooperatives like Coop 57 which held savings of members worth 7 million Euros in
2009 which is projected to rise to 25-30 million Euros in the same quarter of 2014. When I
interviewed a bank official at the end of May 2014, he told me that they currently had 8 million
Euros in savings that they were willing to lend out to appropriate businesses, but did not have
enough viable projects applying. The access to seed finance does thus not seem to be a problem in
the Spanish social and solidarity economy. I found it furthermore remarkable how the individual
enterprises strive to strengthen the alternative economy through offering services specifically
addressed to this particular sector like specialised legal advice or social and solidarity based
insurance policies, through the use of the local currency “Boniato” which is mainly used for businessto-business
trading, and through umbrella organisations that improve the networking and
cooperation between the individual organisations. The individual organisations seem to have a
consciousness of wanting to strengthen and expand their sector as they do not move within
business-culture of competition but cooperation.

Besides organisations for an ethical and cooperative business culture, la feria featured solidarity
initiatives that were both peer-directed and support-initiatives from a wider movement for those
most in need. One example that shows an interesting cultural shift in the older generation is that of
self-help groups for older workers who lost their jobs. While initiated through younger members of
the political movements, it is an interesting development that older members of the working class
who delved into an identity crisis through the loss of their occupations are able to break out of their
isolation and talk about the emotional aspects of losing their jobs; something remarkable, as the
verbal sharing of feelings is usually not common among the male members of that generation. A
wider solidarity movement of another kind is that of doctors and health care workers resisting the
Royal Decree 16/2012 – a norm comparable to a law but not approved by the parliament – which 
changed the public health care system by withdrawing coverage from undocumented migrants
(Garcia, 2012). The movement “Yo SI, Sanidad Universal” (“YES to Universal Healthcare”) informs
doctors and health care workers at private clinics and public hospitals how they can practice civil
disobedience against this decree, lobbies the government to revoke it and forms support groups that
accompany affected individuals to clinics in case the administrative assistant does not heed the
patient (Yo SI, 2014). The solidarity movement and individual actions of doctors and municipal
governments have succeeded within a few months to create widespread civil disobedience against
this decree (Garcia, 2012). A similar method of support groups helps mortgage-victims resist
evictions from their homes and is spreading widely in Spain under the movement of PAH:
[[Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca]] ([[Movement of Mortgage Victims]])."



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* * M.A. Thesis: The Transformative Effects of Crisis: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the [[New Economic Cultures in Spain and Greece]]. Janosch Sbeih. Schumacher College, 2014

[[Category:Spain]]

[[Category:Solidarity Economy]]