“I compare it to a solar system; each planet has its own orbit, but they all revolve around the same sun.” One of the six spokesmen for the initiative, Mikel Saralegi, summarized in this way the collaborative exercise that the People of Alternatives of Bilbao has carried out.

From the first hour of the morning until the night, this solar system was packed with people. But notice, it wasn't just visitors, it was people who were mobilizing. The organizers wanted to stress this point: “We are demonstrating that there are many ways to mobilize.”

Many ways of mobilizing, as well as demands. We are in a new context, with crises in all areas (economic, political, ecological, cultural...), and the ways of responding to the system are changing, according to Olatz Injuobeitia, another spokesman for Ceballos Alternatiba. The confluence of different political cultures leads to a new political culture. And one of the main features of this culture is plurality, in the words of Injuobeitia: “We are in a new time, in an age of diverse strategies, and this initiative is a sign of it.”

The subjects who are building alternatives maintain their autonomy – orbits, to continue with the astronomical simil – but they increasingly see the need to act together around minimum consensuses. Among other things, because the multiple faces of oppression show an ever-increasing bonding.

This is what Olatz Harmful obeitia considers: “We are no longer in the 1980s; capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism… they feed back, and that leads us to ask ourselves: What are the subjects of transformation? How are they going to work?”

What is the right?

Last year, nearly 150 trade unions and social partners presented the Charter of Social Rights of Euskal Herria, and the Bilbao Alternative Charter, to which more people have joined, has been celebrated in their call up to 167. “Has the Charter of Rights organized the People of Alternatives, so the law and the alternative are the same?” we have asked the question.

Olatz Harmful obeitia has taken the time to reflect the answer: “The philosophy of the Charter of Social Rights was from the very beginning to make a new formulation of rights. We are used to the fact that rights are linked to a claim which, as a result, is something that is required of the institutions, the employers or another class. But the claim can be made in other dimensions. In other words, the right can be demanded, but it can also be acquired, exercised, given birth…”.

It is not understood that we came from an era of pure resistance, Harmful obeitia has warned, “in Euskal Herria there has always been a very plural movement, something else is what has been done in the light and what things have been done in the shadow; also the objective of this initiative is to bring to light what was in the shadow”.

Society has a lot to say in guaranteeing rights

“We are demonstrating that we can live differently, in the area of consumption, energy, education, food…”. The agents who worked on the preparation of the initiative on 24 October called for alternatives to overcome the current social model. In their first assessment on the same day, they stressed that Alternatiben Herria was not a utopian trade show. On the contrary, the eleven projects exposed in the window have a dream but the feet well supported on the ground. It was a window of small and not so small alternatives that already work.

In other words, we don't need to wait for anyone to build a different world. “If this is the case, what is the role of public institutions in guaranteeing rights?” we asked Olatz Injuobeitia. “We came from the welfare state,” he began to respond, “and in this context public institutions have been considered as guarantors of rights. But, on the one hand, it has never been entirely like that; and on the other hand, it is getting less and less. My question is: Is it possible that everything is executed from the institutions? Once there, another element appears at the center of the debate: the community. It may be up to the community to exercise certain rights.”

Injuobeitia recalls that the left-wing debate is classic – and one of the causes of some divisions in the 20th century – about the weight that public and community areas have to bear. “I believe that many of the agents inside Alternatiben Herria attach great importance to advertising and that others think that the exercise of certain rights will come from the community (self-management). In the current context, these conceptions converge. The time has come to explore the political capacity of united citizenship. And we have enormous capabilities.”

Daily elections are political.

It would be a pride to try to summarize in this article all that the People of Alternatives gave, as well as try to summarize life itself. In fact, in the initial design of the initiative, Sustainability of Life was one of the areas to be located around the Arenal of Bilbao. Finally, they decided not to dedicate a specific space to this area, understanding that the theme of the whole People of Alternatives was the same: the sustainability of life.

“On a personal level, in interpersonal relationships, in connection with nature, as a people... we have shown our desire to be sovereign,” Mikel Saralegi said on 24 October. They wanted to show, among other things, that the struggle for sovereignty can and does take place on many levels, such as that of Alternatiben Herria, in Bilbao, where everyday choices also have political status.

In the words of Olatz Harmful obeitia, “there are many self-determinations denied in this country, in addition to national self-determination, but we have built a common political site for when those self-determinations materialize”. This site is enriched with the best fertilizer, according to those who have raised the People of Alternatives: “In the way of organizing, in the approaches that have been made, in the dialogue between the experiences that have been presented ... the energy, the illusion and the imagination that we have held in other occasions prisoners have been freed. Transformation comes.”