We arrived at Laudio at 11 a.m., at Faktoria. It's May 15. At first glance, anyone who does not know the area may think that we are in a polygon located in a place of any kind, but following the walk by the river, the town square of Llodio is a kilometer, where every day more than 3,000 people pass through Llodio and Amurrio.

When crossing the door, the carnivals work here, nervous or hasty: how not, within an hour there is an official opening of doors, which are two weeks that made the presentation for the partners. The member of the Gartzen Garaio Factory invites us to a quick guided tour in haute cuisine. We have followed their steps and explanations along 750 useful square meters of empty wood.

Eleven spaces

The main entrance area will host the most massive events (concerts, theatres, children's activities, conferences...). It has in front of it a big tablate and in the left corner a space for children's free play, still unfinished. “But children will also invade spaces beyond their safe realm,” says Garaio, accepting failure enthusiastically. We have accessed the kitchen on the right, which will perform the functions of bar in those activities that are organized, as well as in those in which the economate is open. They will cook and sell local agro-ecological products in the cantina, which can be rented as txoko almost 480 partners: “We have strong or uncomfortable debates and decisions that we must keep interiorizing: for example, to understand that as a partner you cannot bring your family or friends to the corner, so that this generates a Castilian speaking environment in the factory that we have created with a vocation to breathe the Basque”. At the back of the table and in front of the kitchen there is a space with several tables that will be dining today. We said it at the back of the stage, but at the front we could say the same thing, because for events of fewer people it will be projected into this area. Faktoria has cutting-edge technological resources to look from one side to the other, do it in small or large format, record or give the activity directly. In addition to broadcasting, they want to be a tool to promote creation in Basque: audiovisual recordings, rooms for creation, essays...

We leave the elevator – all the factory is accessible – and we go up the stairs to the second floor. On the right, aisle filled with full shelves: personal or household toiletries, meals, beverages and other sales. “We have 500 products from 60 producers, mostly local, organic.” Going back, the center occupies an open space – the children have already christened as a reed what the adults considered a slope to reach the viewpoint on the stage. Work offices of the 16 workers of the Aiaraldea project around the space and meeting rooms for members or citizen movements.

Eleven projects

In Faktoria there are plural and diverse spaces, and behind them the projects: Those created by Aiaraldea in 11 years of fruitful trajectory and which have been summarized in the special journal that explains the project. Kokoriko Hezkuntza Faktoria: which promotes education and transformative leisure to educate people who will change the world through “colonies, workshops, days, teaching units and other initiatives aimed at children, adolescents, youth and parents”. Bor-Bor: “In recent years (...) feminism will have a new tool in the region to strengthen the empowerment and empowerment of women”. Komunika: which offers design, drafting, audiovisual production, translation and interpretation works, with the aim of financing the entire project, Aiaraldea Ekintzak Faktoria. Economate: it goes beyond the sale of local organic products mentioned above. “This line aims to influence school canteens, the catering supply, the home distribution of aid, the promotion of new generations of farmers... with the aim of continuing to promote food sovereignty.” Communication Aiaraldea: aiaraldea.eus and fortnightly symbol paper. “It has broadly exceeded the limits that a media entirely in Euskera could have until it became the reference medium of the region.”

We leave filled with Faktoria's eye ears in search of a pintxo coffee that fills his stomach, submerging Garaio and his peers in the final touches. In just half an hour Faktoria will open its doors. It’s just over 12:00 for when we’re back, people have started to enter Faktoria, but not before without reading and filling in a leaflet. “Read calmly, for us it’s important,” says the buddy at the entrance.

What are you? The mouth? (Apt to speak). The ear? (understandable). Or Heart? ("I don't understand Basque, but I'm a person in Basque. I will respect this breathing space of the Basque Country and with the vocabulary you have given me, or by asking the following, I will try to speak in Basque”). Please note: “If you don’t understand the Basque Country, you don’t speak or respect it, we regret that Faktoria isn’t your place. We hope you will understand that our language is diminished and that it needs safe spaces for revitalization. This is one of them.” With the result they will see the “scoreboard of the Basque Country” in all the activities of Faktoria.

Respiratory for all corners

The factory wants to be a safe and breathing space for Euskera, but not only. We also – we continue reading the brochure – “for women*, children, migrants, excluded, young people, with functional diversity, dissident sexual identities”. The members of Faktoria want every person entering the security guarantee space to be: “I am committed to respecting, caring and actively feeding this safe space,” will be signed beforehand by everyone who crosses the door to respond to Faktoria’s great challenge: Promote “another model of society in Basque and Basque”. Feminism? Communitarism? Food sovereignty? Transformative social economy? Decolonality?... Transforming the world?

But wasn’t Aiaraldea a communication project in Basque “alone”? Well, they were born in 2010, but much more than they wanted to be from birth, those aspirations were explained and structured in the strategic reflection Aiaraldea 2020, begun in 2015, and today they are much closer than they would like to have. Witness factory, symbol, instrument. They summed it up perfectly in the title of the conference organized by the Sociolinguistics Cluster in September 2020: Aiaraldea Actions Factory: From a draft communication to a comprehensive Community project.

Sumak Kawsay, Euskera and Euskera

The eleven corners of the factory have stopped padding and we have all sat, without empty chairs, attentive to the stage. “Welcome to the factory to live in free Basque,” the presenter said, and the will has escaped us from the provocative and suggestive text of the Cluster read the previous days: “Our goal is to complete the ecosystem we need to live.” And we need, they say, they eat, whether they're friends, money, bedroom, education, leisure ... That is why today there is talk of the same temerity they had in 2015 to dream of Faktoria, the regional bank of the future that will finance the project or housing cooperatives. Sumak Kawsay (Living well) taken to the indigenous peoples of Abya Yala. The Basque country has to serve to “create a different model of society in which to live happily. Euskera has to serve to draw in our language a way of life that Castilian does not offer.”

Ruper Ordorika has taken the stage and enthusiasm has re-emerged between the persuasive words and melodies of the musician Jausika and the words of the members of Faktoria. The regional strikers and “without mystifying, our little Ulysses that has come to visit us” have been recalled by the oñatiarra Joseba Sarrionandia before leaving with Martin Larralde: the factorians of Euskera, as a tool of Good Living, “because we are convinced that this central transforming function will strengthen our vulnerable language”. The Basque country has to be transverse in the whole of society or in the institutions, but they want to “add”, “the Basque country has to be transverse from below and from the left to take the centrality”. They place the marker on the walls: 64 Voices; 4 Ears; 2 Hearts. The trovator sings to the need to take care of what we want: the Basques want to take care of the Basques with power in Faktoria, attracting the Euskaldunes to the transformative Basque, to the Castellanoparlantes. “Our small experience and timid steps so far also demonstrate this to us; to the extent that we have been hanging tools in the attempt to promote food sovereignty and agroecology, feminism and transformative education, all those marginal struggles we have seen attract to the Basque, we have seen them Euskaldunizar, we have approached us, we have also approached them”. They want to continue to break this path.

Only the beginning

At the end of the concert, the time to eat. We have enjoyed snacks prepared with “local or ecological” raw materials. Garaio comes back to the coffee season. “Near the sky is not right,” Ruper sang at the end, “I want to be here lying on the earth, listening to their heartbeats, loves and misery,” and when Garaio talks about weaknesses and challenges, you think you dreamed, but you don’t buy in dreaming and self-indulgence factorians. “We do not want Faktoria to be a standardised project [to be a partner you have to pay EUR 66 a year or 11 a month for example], inclusion is now one of the main challenges and how to work with migratory languages.” Knots that are difficult to unstack, have restlessness and are affecting the head. With this, and with eleven other aspects: how to attract people and groups with Faktoria projects, reflect on the model of militancy, approach the strategic reflection Aiaraldea 2025… They are at risk along the way, but there are no mosses among them. “People come to us lately, “You’ve done it!” Do you get it? Let’s start now!”