COMUNIDAD DE LAKABE (LAKABE COMMUNITY)

Walking towards utopia

travelling by communities and ecovillages

COMUNIDAD DE LAKABE (LAKABE COMMUNITY)

lakabeko@yahoo.es
+34 948392002

This community and ecovillage was occupied-squattered in 1980 with the will to find communitarian and social forms of life, to create a fairer and more harmonious society based on sharing and the dialogue. Thirty people inhabit there, the majority young. It is situated in Navarra (Nafarroa-Euskal Herria, North of the Spanish Estate), surrounded by mountains and near the sadly famous dam of Itoiz. The “legal" situation continues being as in the beginning, that is to say, without properties nor agreements with the Administration.

Its activity more well-known and source of income is their organic certified bakery. They deliver integral bread and cakes to different populations of Navarra and special fairs-markets (i.e. Biocultura). In addition, they are dedicated to the orchard, livestock, reconstruction, organization of courses and meetings, etc.

The economy is totally shared: everything belongs to everybody. With the income of the bakery, they have been reconstructing the ten left houses and church, respecting such how they were, and obtaining a great self-sufficiency on power level. They have solar panels, a wind turbine and a petrol engine, used when it is not enough the energy accumulated by sun and wind; few liters of fuel to the week of average.

They also have enough resources on food level, from products of the orchard to consumption or products derived from animals. The diet is basically vegetarian and occasionally with biological meat of its own livestock. If bad nonmemory, there were cows, pigs, rabbits, hens, peacocks...

They are distributed in houses by families, couples, singles, young people together... The main meals are joint, with turns to cook. During few years in the 80´s there was a self-managed school in the own village, later they went and they continue going to the conventional school.

The first years there was no road and all the transports went on foot or with the help of other animals (flour, bread, construction equipments, children...). After years using a path, lately a road has been built right under the village, with connection to it.

Political and socially, they have been and are related to different social movements (ecological, feminist, “okupación”-squatter, antimilitarist...), doing non-violent direct actions. They also form a part of the Iberian Network of Ecovillages and the Global Network of Ecovillages (GEN).

In spring-summer they are accustomed to organize workcamps and courses around ecological agriculture, self-sufficiency, handmade elaboration of products, bioconstruction, renewable energies, grey waters, creativity, communitarian life, resolution of conflicts, etc.

Some of the languages spoken there are Castilian-Spanish, Basque, Catalan, ¿Galician?, English and French. Access to telephone.

Lakabe, a reference in the Spanish Estate, already is a quarter of century old, and they continue there, "living what we believe".

BUS: close stop

STAY: 2 weeks in July’04

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