EN
I am a commoner at the Froxán Commons Community, a small village in the Galizan municipality of Lousame, close to Santiago de Compostela. Our rural Community has 100 hectares of woodlands which are managed through direct assembly democracy and also self-manages important services such as village water supply. The Community faces considerable threats from the mining industry and has been drawn into a protracted conflict with the companies.
The municipality of Lousame, in which I have recently served as local councillor, is a good example of the reality of land commons in Galiza. common land is 50% of the total in the municipality, with 33 commons community assemblies managing its resources, that also include in most cases basic services such as supply of water.
In this corner of Europe, the commons are a crucial aspect of our life. 1/3 of the land in Galiza is "commons", some 650.000 hectares that contribute to the livelihood of more than half a million people. Galizan "commons" is a form of "property" which is neither State-owned nor individual, but belonging to communities as open and fluid groups of people settled in the land that steward its resources.
With this context in mind, we are mostly interested in traditional mechanisms for commons management through rural assembly democracy. But we are also very interested in expanding the notion of the commons to other practises and places. I am also involved with the iComunales initiative (http://www.icomunales.org/), connected to the global ICCA Consortium (http://www.iccaconsortium.org/).
Finally, I would like to draw your attention to a massive conflict that currently involved several other commons communities in our municipality regarding a project to set up a massive industrial waste landfill for a million tons in prime agricultural and forest lands that directly affects dozens of farmers and drinking water supplies of many of our villages. It would be of great support if the European Commons Assembly would consider issuing a Resolution in support for the commoners movement againts this landfill, uniting their voice with that of the commoners of Europe.
