The transformative social economy is having a great boost in Euskal Herria, in Catalonia… how is the situation in Andalusia?

When we talk about cooperativism in Andalusia we mean cooperatives of large agricultural owners. When you see products with the names of saints, they have usually been created by the most social sectors of the Franco regime in the late 1950s to defend prices. But in 2008, we created Coop57, and from there, the other kind of cooperatives are emerging. From Autonomy Sur we are creating a discourse on cooperatives, which is very different in the collective imaginary of Andalusia.

What are the large surface orchards that we see in Huelva or Almeria?

Same thing. They own greenhouses that have come together to defend prices, but they do not cooperate in working, consumption or means of production. They come together to defend prices against the large distribution chains that sell strawberries and vegetables in a short time on European markets.

Strawberries are collected by Moroccan women, mothers of children under 13 years of age, to ensure that they return.

And the women of Bulgaria and Romania are also originally hired – with CCOO and UGT as intermediaries, everything has to be said – with a “legal” umbrella to bring them into a situation of extreme exploitation. It is ecologically unsustainable, both because of the destruction of aquifers and because of the indebtedness with the Dutch ultra-fast technology used. Economist Manuel Delgado Cabeza says they are “production platforms”, not agriculture: they are beaches with tremendous input cost.
They have denounced that the Andalusian public administration promotes ‘business partisanship’.
The Andalusian Government receives large subsidies to agricultural cooperatives, but I do not know who controls who. In short, oil cooperatives belong to the DCoop group and are in the hands of global agents linked to the Italian or American capital. It's completely symbiotic.

There is a debate on this. Will we be more self-sufficient with fewer subsidies? Is not public space the right that we have won the citizens?

Neoliberalism has opened up the idea that the state does not have to intervene in the economy, nor does it have to intervene. And it is precisely those who defend it that receive the most public resources: R & D no longer exists in big business, it is a lie, it is done by the public administration and then the licences are privatised. Of course we have to look for those aids, of course we have to rescue those public resources from private claws. What is the danger? Dependence. But that's why we don't have to give up, it's not black or white, we can go to the council, the city hall and other sources so that we don't jeopardize the financial autonomy of our project.

Should we get rid of the idea that capitalist companies are self-sufficient?

No one is self-sufficient. Where does this competitive, high-tech cooperative drink from? The University. They're subsidized by the effort that's being made in basic science. What happens is that the story that has triumphed leaves these aids in the shade, while highlighting those that are received by the subordinate classes. They have been saying for a long time that Marinaleda is a subsidized project.

How is Marinaleda now?

At a very hopeful time. He suffered when the crisis broke out, but the cooperatives took a step forward and are now doing so; Manuel Sánchez Gordillo remains a benchmark. Marinaleda is not aware of its external significance: when he had a serious financial problem, Coop57 raised in a month 600,000 euros, they did not believe that we were going to get it, they believed that we were chuleando.De this hole has come out for two fundamental things:
on the one hand, because the olive grove is cultivated very well and because capitalism says that the oil is now expensive; and on the other, because cooperativists control production. At present it has hardly any debt.

What is the next step? Marinaleda’s economic activity must be consistent with the alternative, ecological, ethical financial distribution...

In the Basque Country Koop57 it was created a few years ago, in Andalusia you have more experience with ethical finance and
solidarias.Sin your help, many social economy organizations would be dead. There is no tool as practical, useful and functioning as well as Andalusia Coop57 to transform the economy. And if it's, let me be told. In the complex world of finance, where there is nothing more capitalist than money, it has been able to maintain its assembly character and remain a social movement. And efficiently: They manage more than EUR 30 million among ten workers.

And how do you do that?

Do not give up social and democratic management. Among so many millions of hands, it would be normal to see how conventional banks do it… But if we think it's going to go better looking at them, we're wrong. Moreover, in view of our ability to work as a team, in many capitalist companies the words “quality” and “collaboration” have begun to be used; from the moment the Taylorism was over and the Toyotism was initiated, they want to be cooperatives that bind capital into the hands of a few. Let us not meet them when they come to us.

In Autonomy Sur you advise unions and cooperatives, including a tourism cooperative. What's that like?

In Conil de la Frontera, which you love so much the Basques, 50 small accommodations have been organized into a second-level cooperative. People gathered around the Campito Inn said they did not want to continue giving money to Booking because the collaborative economy is a trap…

… In Euskal Herria there is also much concern about tourist apartments and portals of this kind.

In short, they are “the capitalism of the platform”. These accommodations in Conil, instead of paying for Booking, created their own booking center through the cooperative Conil Hospeda, and they have been installed on the Internet. The next step will be to create an alternative tourism consumption: without exploited Kelly, distributing wealth, making collective purchases in the same place… What is the challenge? Building a cooperative is easy, but creating cooperatives is very difficult. Only if these people come together to increase their profits, they're not going anywhere. But if in a town as spectacular as Conil, saved from the canons of the destroyed Andalusian coast, they create a new model of integrated tourism development in the territory, that is something else.

Another of the projects that you have is the Portal of Andalusia. Did you see the need to create an Internet portal that would otherwise explain the news of the economy?

In addition to consulting work, we research and relate to university people who join our ideas, to whom we have offered a space as article writers through this portal. We also want to take a turn to the present day, what is happening in the Andalusian Parliament, and make the unions and organisations around us more visible. This did not exist, and no matter how bad it was, if it was something. We encourage them and then we get rid of it... We have a similar experience with an alternative dealer.

Dealer?

It is an Internet shopping platform that offers products related to the Andalusian Coop57 or the Marinaleda seal. They have the support of the transformative economy: ecological pasta, craft beer… Recently we have united the SAT Internet store in Marinaleda and Lamedina.coop. In a way, we want to centralize what comes in, but decentralize what comes out so that those products are also present at the local headquarters or occupied spaces of social agents, SAT, CGT and social agents. The idea is to create jobs with that militant consumption. We have pushed it forward, but we want it to continue on its own as far as possible. With Portal de Andalucía it is also the same, if tomorrow we are approached by journalists...

Aren't there people working exclusively on the portal?

No, perhaps because we want to continue working on economic issues in a different way. There is a journalism that puts “economy” above, but does not tell what people are eating in that territory. In Euskal Herria you have to know what is behind the stepped dishes or the Jabugo ham, how is the value chain of the table olives that we bring to our mouths, what happens to the shipyards… That does not appear in the economic press.
There are several Andalusia: From city like Seville or Granada and from invisible field. Not only are there day laborers, there are subcontracting chains that are only precarious in the agri-food and textile industry. In Paris you can pay a bag of the Loewe brand for 200 euros, but this bag has been made by the woman who is in a basement of Ubrique for 3 euros.

Subcontracting, among other things, has been imposed on construction in the Basque Country. And in Andalusia?

Barbarities have been committed. In 2005, Sevilla II prison was built in Morón de la Frontera. The social movements were anti-militarists, because the base is there, but we never doubted the prison; the manipulation of power was brutal compromising the employment and starting to come subcontractors… But of the “industry of suffering” in the end nothing remained in the people and fifteen years later we still did not put the spotlight there. Prisons are being built – I think there are ten in Andalusia – but if a person cuts his veins in his cell there is no news of the press, neither good nor bad, and a person has cut his veins in the Port of Santa Maria.