A few weeks ago, I visited Granada, Spain, to meet with my friend and comrade Giulio Quarta from the Crypto Commons Association before heading off to another city to meet more friends. On my last day there we decided to rent a car and take a day trip to Marinaleda, a village in the Andalusian countryside. Known to some as a “communist utopia”, Marinaleda is home to 2,700 people and is famous for its eccentric mayor, Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo.
Gordillo was elected following the end of the fascist dictatorship in Spain in 1979, once local elections were reintroduced. Ever since, Marinaleda has been run according to “communist” principles. Residents can rent houses for 25 euros per month, membership to the municipal pool is only 3 euros per year, and there are plenty of amenities available that aren’t typically found in any nearby village.
While the unemployment rate in Spain currently sits around 13% and Andalusia particularly struggles at 19%, Marinaleda boasts a significantly lower rate of just 5%. This is thanks to its cooperatively run farm and factory, which are jointly owned by the municipality and its workers. We knew we had to see it for ourselves – in many ways this was our communist Mecca mini road trip.
Marinaleda: Communist Utopia?
After we parked our car, we came across the village’s recreational center, adorned with a large mural of Che Guevara, next to what appeared to be an old football pitch. The local kids seemed to prefer riding their bicycles and scooters through it rather than use it for football. We proceeded around the back of the building – passing plenty of communist and anarchist graffiti – and through the public park with an artificial hill, which appeared to be situated at the highest point in the village. It was quiet and hot that day, but we could feel the small town revolutionary spirit in the air.
We continued through the park, down into the village’s main street, and stopped at a bar for a snack. We were surprised how many people were there in the middle of the day. Unsure if this was a typical Marinaledeños siesta routine or a sign of a strong social community, we moved on to the bar across the street. This was the iconic cultural center and union-owned bar that closely collaborated with the city. Iron arches lined the covered outside space with the motto of the village “Una utopía hacia la paz”, or “A utopia towards peace”. We were at the right place.
While awkwardly attempting to strike up a conversation with a group of men enjoying beers at the next table, Giulio asked to bum a cigarette from them before following with, “How do you like living in Marinaleda?” They seemed surprised that we were interested in the village, but warmly welcomed us to sit at their table. Despite the challenges of their Andalusian accents, which became especially evident when they conversed amongst themselves we found ourselves engaged in a friendly discussion about the things they liked about the village with few serious complaints.
One man, who appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s, expressed that for him, life in Marinaleda was perfect. He had stable work at the local cooperatively owned farm, paid 25 euros per month for his house, and had plenty of money left for savings and drinking beer with friends. A couple others at the table didn’t live in the village, yet they loved to visit frequently, drawn in by the bustling social events and live concerts. An older gentleman who grew up in the village regaled us with stories of how they fought to create a community where everyone was provided for. One of the workers offered us some weed to roll a joint with. “Don’t worry, there are no police in Marinaleda” he reassured, chuckling at our momentary hesitance. Turned out there hadn’t been any police in the village for years. They seemed quite aware that they had it pretty good there.
We stayed there for a couple hours, drinking, eating, and talking with everyone that rotated through the table. It seemed that everyone was intimately aware of each other, perhaps not so uncommon in these small villages. The walls of the bar were adorned with portraits of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, interspersed with photographs of the village’s inhabitants, including the mayor, participating in various local demonstrations and occupations over the years. While there were plenty of references to communist figures throughout the village, conversing with the locals was not like speaking to the bookish, academic theory nerds you may come across in online communist political groups. The villagers we spoke with didn’t really seem to care about politics in theory and instead simply understood that they lived good and dignified lives. Their material needs were being adequately met and then some.
After we left the bar Giulio and I discussed the practical realization of the political project in the village. As we wandered I began to realize that Marinaleda shared many interesting similarities with network states, although it embodied more of my ideal vision of what network states should have been, and was firmly rooted in the traditions of socialist politics. While certainly not a utopia, it has a lot going for it.
The most striking aspect of Marinaleda is that while it lacks diplomatic recognition as a separate country, it undoubtedly exercises more sovereignty than any startup or DAO that claims to be a network state. While exerting its sovereignty through engaging in local legislation and governance, Marinaleda also employs real collective action, led by Gordillo. Here, Gordillo resembles the charismatic founder archetype that Balaji insists is vital for a network state’s inception.
Working Class Sovereignty
After years of enduring poverty, hunger, and repression in the Andalusian countryside under the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco, the situation began to change in 1980, a year after municipal elections. Around 700 villagers initiated a hunger strike, demanding better pay and stricter regulation of the old employment system. Their efforts proved successful and led to land occupations, rallying behind the slogan “Land to those who work on it.” What they pointed at was that the vast majority of cultivable land in Andalusia was owned by either large haciendas owned by wealthy elite who saw their farm laborers as expendable or by the Spanish nobility who often did little with the land, if anything at all. Although fascism had ended, the inequalities it created were not prioritized for resolution by the new government.
And so after a decade of land occupations around the village, in 1991, the Andalusian government transferred a 3,000-acre tract of land, owned by a member of the Spanish nobility, to Marinaleda for the benefit of its residents. Since then, they have cultivated the land and provided hundreds of jobs on the farm through the Marinaleda Cooperative, generating income and food for the village. A few years later, they established a food processing plant supplied by their own farm, creating additional employment and enhancing economic resilience. While the economic crisis in 2010 led to a 30% unemployment rate in Andalusia, Marinaleda managed to maintain near full employment.
During the crisis, Gordillo led protests with the Andalusian Union of Workers as part of the anti-austerity protests (Indignados Movement), urging the federal government to halt austerity measures that disproportionately harmed working-class people. In an effort to both feed the unemployed and draw attention to their cause, the labor unions stole food from several supermarkets. Gordillo earned the nickname “Robin Hood” because of it. The goal was to stress that media attention focused on Spain’s risk premium, debt, and deficit, rather than addressing the hunger experienced by real people when there was an abundance of available food.
Unlike the network state approach, which involves pooling capital together to assert state sovereignty within an already sovereign state’s territory, the people of Marinaleda established working-class sovereignty through direct action and subverting the local state structure for their benefit. They exerted sovereignty by seizing a means of production (land) and democratizing its fruits through the cooperative. They also revealed the absurdity of the existing system through extralegal means, while simultaneously proving their legitimacy in the process. Punishment for their actions, such as stealing, was minimal due to widespread popular support. The Spanish government could not fully suppress the protests or the rising tide of support for Marinaleda’s efforts.
As I’ve discussed throughout the OTNS series, in other interviews, and in my piece for Outland Magazine, the most significant red flag regardingThe Network State is its insistence on requiring diplomatic recognition as a separate state and territorial sovereignty. Combined with the network state ingredient of pooling capital from aligned individuals (i.e., making an investment that necessitates a return) to purchase land, this essentially forms a recipe for neocolonialism. I think the appeal for people lies not in creating new states (despite Balaji’s explicit suggestion to do so) but in the need for new sovereignties that don’t feel imposed from above. What perplexes me, though, is that if you take network states to their ultimate conclusion as explained by Balaji, they only attempt to establish new forms of top-down authoritarian sovereignties based on physical territory. The caveat is that, in theory, you’d be among people you “align” with on a single “moral innovation”, reducing the need for engaging in politics by the broader population.
Marinaleda, in contrast, has established a working-class sovereignty at the municipal level that the Spanish state does not interfere with, while still utilizing essential state-provided infrastructure, such as the affordable healthcare system. Marinaleda understands sovereignty not as a zero or one, but as a heterarchical overlapping of different sovereignties that resist the state’s tendency to assert monolithic control. This approach is more in line with Primavera’s description of the Blockchaingov alternative to network states, which envisions a fabric of overlapping layers of sovereignty.
Marinaleda is also a part of broader networks of like-minded cities in Spain, such as the Network of Municipalities for the Third Republic. Established in 2007, the network began when eleven Andalusian municipalities presented a motion to the Andalusian Parliament, requesting the initiation of a constituent process that would allow for the establishment of a republic in Spain. Since then, the network has expanded to include several other cities outside of Andalusia. Although sharing some similarities with the Network State concept, the goals of these municipalities are quite different. They aim to remove the monarchy and foster collaboration within the existing state structure, rather than creating an entirely separate network state.
Often, I receive comments along the lines of “well, at least network states are offering an alternative, what do you have?” Well, here you go. Marinaleda is a living example of an alternative, with more real world experience and achievements for working class people on its belt than any self-proclaimed network state. As pop-up cities that attract proto-network state enthusiasts potentially emerge, I think Marinaleda stands as a salient counterexample to the framework proposed by The Network State, backed by tangible evidence of legitimacy. Rather than trying to hand wave away politics and start with a naïvely utopian blank slate, Marinaleda demonstrates that by embracing a legitimate working-class politics, we can create alternative ways of living that fosters more utopian, peaceful existence on the land we already inhabit.
Thanks to @MonolithBrah for help editing this article.
