The GKN in Florence (Italy), a car components factory with 400 employees, has been fighting for two years to prevent its final closure. Its resistance is inspiring and its objective is even more: to achieve industrial conversion from the bottom, in a socially integrated factory: Ex GKN for future. "We have no options, this is our workplace. We're going to try to resist and stop," they said at a press conference in Lezama.

Anyway, I want to explain the story of “The Pretty Factory”, without going into technicalities and theoretical and conceptual confusion. In short, this is a small step in creating fairer supply chains of technologies. It is a humble but special proposal, because it values the potential for mutual trust and support, as they are currently two real weapons for mass construction.

It all started just over a year ago, with the perseverance of Emanuele, a relentless member of Friday for Future. Emanuel told me "Factories", so we baptized the Collettivo di Fabrizio, a group of GKN workers in struggle, who had strong support from social and territorial movements and who intended to tackle from below an industrial reconversion plan: Ex GKN for Future. It wasn't a consequence of chance. Just in case someone has lost us on the road, the boys and girls for the weather that filled the streets in 2019 long emancipated themselves from the figure of Greta Thunberg and continue to work on many other fronts.

Turning to the subject, "downstream industrial conversion" played well in the ears of the Observatori del Deute in the Globalització (ODG, Observatory on Debt in Globalization), an organization to which I belong. We therefore completed the meeting with Darius, a GKN worker. His struggle, without selling smoke, was lovely. Darío half-mixed the proposals and the self-criticism, and moved on to himself.

In a nutshell, Darius said: "We have been fighting the closure of our company for two years and we are trying to reconvert the industry. We want to make electric cargo bikes and photovoltaic panels by controlling the means of production. But we are not at a good time, we are suffering from the tiredness of the struggle and the pressure we are suffering. We have to move forward in order not to be defeated. We have to keep our jobs, but what we want is for all of this to make sense,” he added.

GKN workers had to be dismissed definitively by the end of 2023 and, precisely, in order to obtain international protection, in December of that year we invited Darius to Barcelona. We are meeting on a laborious agenda with the media, institutions, social and solidarity economy organisations and trade unions. Darío spoke quite clearly about the needs of the Collettivo di Fabbrica. "I think we have to make efforts for the energy communities to take a step forward and sign memoranda of commitment to our production," he insisted. "What we need is for these actors to move," said the actor.

At ODG, we pledged to try. The truth is, I was very hesitant that we could achieve it, because all the transformation projects carried backpacks of a thousand tasks still more than for convenience, and although what the "Factory" proposed was reasonable and innovative, who can assure us that its demand would not be one thousand and one?

Factory Rescue

Without losing hope, we organize meetings with cooperatives and energy communities. The answer was very positive, but if the thing didn't move quickly, we could run out of the factory. Fortunately, a script change saved for a moment the factory workers, who were not fired at at the end of the year. In this concession for a precarious extension appeared Nuria, a Catalan woman settled in La Palma who had long fought hard to promote an energy community on the island. After a meeting with Darius, he told us that perhaps the energy community of La Palma, the Bonita Energy, could sign a compromise memorandum. The Palma community has a short- and medium-term development plan which aims to implement 20 collective self-consumption facilities of 100 kW distributed throughout the island territory.

From there, you can imagine, after some displacements, the match between the Factory and the Bonita Energetica materialized in April. The confidence and determination of this Canary Islands team is to be welcomed. Someone had to take the first step towards a pioneering, open and mutually supportive agreement between an energy community that is committed to buying production in the future and a factory purchased by class-conscious workers and climate justice.

At this point, you may think that this story isn't that much. It is clear that the story of the "Pretty Factory" does not have the hype of a series of Netflix, but if we compare it – now I will include technical issues – with the industrial pact of the Green Pact and with its basic raw materials laws and the clean zero industry, I assure you it is a real revolution.

I don't know, I thought for a moment that the writing of this article could be necessary to thank the people who have provided it and, at the same time, encourage more energy communities to support projects like the Collettivo di Fabbrica.

After all, Angela Davis said a few weeks ago at Fira Literal that "I really like the idea that hope is a discipline, because it makes us understand that our responsibility is also to generate hope." With the words of Davis, I see in this story a great discipline of hope, the responsibility of Emanuele, Darío and Núria, and of groups such as Fridays for Future, Collettivo di Fabbrica, Energia Bonita or the ODG itself.

And in this case, in addition, it has done the nicest things.