The guests were Hirune Tobajas and Elia González, from the Errekaleor neighborhood of Vitoria-Gasteiz; Irati Gutiérrez and Ibai Atutxa, from the self-managed center Karmela of Bilbao; and Sarah-Arnaldo de Castro and Nerea Beloqui, from the Donostiarra neighborhood of Infernu. Ainara Santamaría, from the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising of the UPV/EHU, was in charge of running the program.

Self-management as a tool, but for what?

For De Castro, a member of Hell, self-management is “the main tool to meet the needs of a community.” It serves to work collective consciousness, to increase social and political capital and to have more voice. "New dynamics emerge and teach us to work together." In addition, he added that in the face of the criminalisation of poverty, cooperativism and self-management are essential for protection and mutual care.

"Self-managed spaces are vital. "Self-management gives us a transformative capacity, and that gives us power," said Gutiérrez.Karmela puts neighbors at the center with self-management, and considers it essential to create collective awareness and to teach people to live in groups.

For Errekaleor members self-management is a fighting trench: "A tool to cope with this model of society." Knowledge is reinvented, networks are created, and Tobajas pointed out that this is what makes the community stronger. "It provides means to ensure internal surveillance and to protect itself from system attacks," added the Department of the Interior. For example, during the health crisis, a protocol was developed to protect the police and to care for people who were sick or confined. "We are neighbors, we have a common project and we form a community. Self-management gives consistency to the community; in other words, self-managed space is a community.

Aids or obstacles to alliances?

"Karmela is a project born from the beginning for alliances," explained Atutxa.Sometimes it works very well and others not so well." In total, around 40-50 groups have their "home" in Karmela and Atutxa the need to work together to get the project out adelante.En this sense has underlined that self-management puts groups in contact and that alliances are created thus.

In the case of Infernu, Beloqui said that the alliances occurred quite naturally when adding to the police attacks. They have been particularly related to the occupation movement and the reception networks. "Sometimes, alliances emerge more with the intention of dealing with certain problems than when you start to think ideologically," he added.

In Errekaleor, in particular, they have called for the mobilisation of the hand with the okupation movement because of the criminalisation against occupation. They have also created alliances with the feminist movement and other agents of the popular movement. Thus, they have been participating and weaving relationships with different agents.

Diversity, challenges and concerns

"We are a multi-ethnic team in Hell," De Castro said. People from different lifestyles, cultures, origins and languages live together. He said that this generates many conflicts, but at the same time diversity has provided them with many tools for their functioning and the contributions are very varied. Mutual respect is one of the minimum conditions; it insisted on the need to listen long before talking and on the need to act from empathy.

Initially, in the Errekaleor district there was virtually no plurality, but over time it has been greatly expanded. They explained that they have been bringing together families, adults, children and people from different backgrounds. Plurality has given the project strength, but the concern of that diversity is that it will change the model of militancy that has existed so far and are in the process of analyzing it. However, they have launched a welcoming process to promote coexistence, as they believe that the presence of different types of people gives them a lot of strength.

For Karmela members it is necessary to crush frames, that is, to work in small working groups. They believe that decentralisation increases participation and, for example, makes language management much easier for them. For them, it's more enriching to work that way. In addition, Gutiérrez added that they have a care assembly, which will serve as a space to share experiences and work together. As far as diversity is concerned, space has two challenges: on the one hand, making space more accessible, as they have stairs; and on the other hand, receiving those who come to Karmela to know what the project is.

In conclusion to the round table, we had space for the question and reflection. A listener asked the diners about the collectivization of emotions, which is little talked about, asking them if in their groups they have fixed themselves in the cultivation of them. Errekaleor members, for example, explained that they intend to create such workspaces and told us that once a month they hold an assembly to work on conflicts, mutual care and coexistence in Karmela. It was an assembly that emerged from the need, and it seems to them that it can be very profitable. However, Beloqui pointed out that among them there has been reflection on the management of emotions, but that they have not yet had the opportunity to address it. The three agents identified the collectivization of emotions as a necessity, and on many occasions they thought we observed them too little. In the activity of weaving communities, the sphere of emotions can be a new challenge, especially in this context of crisis and social change.

Finally, Andere Ormazabal and Ainara Santamaria presented the work of the research groups to close the day.