Kilombo is a collaborative project between the cooperatives LaFundició , Keras Buti , Tarpuna , and Voltes , the association Keras Buti , and the distributor Ecocentral .
The inter-cooperation between the promoting entities of the initiative aims to:
1. Consolidate agroecological and local consumption in l’Hospitalet through the consumer cooperative Kera Buti and the dining service of the kitchens of the Casal de Gent Gran de Bellvitge and barri Centre, in collaboration with the Keras Buti association.
2. Defend and care for the agricultural heritage of the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat. With the acquisition and implementation of a 2-hectare farm dedicated to agroecological production.
3. Promote a cultural space for creation and thought that affects the restitution of values that put the care of life and the territory at the center. Through the improvement and naturalization of the outdoor spaces of 2 educational centers in the city and work in relation to plant fibers in collaboration with the cooperative of architects Voltes.
L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, in the region of Barcelonès, is the second city of Catalonia and where there are several Social and Solidarity Economy initiatives that are being structured in recent years to make visible and share energies. There are also long-standing social and cultural initiatives, including the work that LaFundició has sustained for 15 years.
For three years, we have been working in l’Hospitalet to promote our own economic model that fosters social and solidarity economy alternatives that are sustainable and sensitive to the idiosyncrasies and needs of the territory. The deindustrialization of the metropolitan area of Barcelona was accompanied by the conversion to the service sector of a part of the mass of workers who lived in the city. Especially women were employed in the highly precarious care sector. A clear example of this conversion can be found in the municipal commitment to the hotel sector and convention tourism linked to Fira Barcelona.
L’Hospitalet experienced uncontrolled urban growth as a result of different migratory cycles throughout the 20th century, intensified from the 1960s onwards by the Franco regime’s “developmentalist” plans, which led to the rezoning of even more agricultural land for the construction of new housing estates. To these processes, which have resulted in one of the highest population densities in Europe, is currently added the construction of hotels and new real estate developments designed to attract a middle class expelled from Barcelona by the high cost of housing.
We understand that it is imperative to review this model and rethink the link between cities and their rural environment to help us build new sustainable economic models in this territory and for the communities that inhabit it.
LaFundició has developed several work processes that converge on this same idea:
Keras Buti , with which a consumer cooperative of agroecological products linked to producers of the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat and with popular prices has been constituted. At this point, Kera Buti is the only consumer cooperative that exists in the city. At this moment, the cooperative is articulated in four distribution nodes in l’Hospitalet and one in Barcelona and has 60 consumer members. At the same time, the Keras Buti Association was constituted, with the will to value the gypsy culture and its link with the culture and rural economies.
El Trajín , a proposal for the economic reactivation of the disused stalls of the municipal markets in terms of social and solidarity economy.
In this context, Kilombo is a proposal to strengthen and expand the economic base of the community networks to which we are joining.
Les Cabasses is a place of material and symbolic production, a 2-hectare farm dedicated to ecological cultivation and at the same time a space for the production of rururban imaginaries and practices for the ecosocial transition, located in the socio-ecosystem of the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat and its delta.
Les Cabasses represents the material and symbolic point of union of the rururban territory of the Parc Agrari with the cultural and economic actions put in place in the Kilombo project in the peri-urban territory of l’Hospitalet and the neighborhood of la Marina in Barcelona. On the one hand, its production will be destined to the cooperative Kera Buti and to the kitchens of La Suculenta, while allowing the creation of jobs for migrants and the gypsy community of l’Hospitalet; on the other hand, it is the scenario of diverse processes and spaces of thought and practice on political cuisine, sustainable beekeeping, bioconstruction, plant fibers or the temporary and spatial arrangements of capitalism in the territory of the Llobregat delta itself.
Keras Buti is an initiative with a double aspect: on the one hand a cooperative of agroecological consumption and on the other an association that investigates and promotes the link between the social and solidarity economy and gypsy knowledge. Part of this research has been substantiated in work processes around plant fibers and their integration into the culture and ways of life of the Gypsy People. As explained by the sociologist and activist Pastori Filigrana, we can find a basketry economy, ecologically sustainable and aimed at providing satisfiers for the sustenance of life, opposed to the capitalist logics of extractivism and accumulation.
From Kera Buti, several workshops have been promoted to transmit and investigate the aesthetic and material possibilities of plant fibers. A significant example has been the different workshops to make wicker baskets to replace the plastic boxes with which the ecological products distributed by the Keras Buti cooperative itself are transported. Another example is the architectural elements built in the courtyards of the schools Prat de la Manta and Gornal.
In the neighborhood of la Marina (Barcelona) several actions have been promoted to recover and value the agricultural past of the neighborhood and relate it to the current ecological production in the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat. Among these actions is the expansion of the map of urban agricultural initiatives Ruralitzem . This work and the involvement in the community networks of the neighborhood have resulted in the agreement to open a store of the Kera Buti cooperative in the premises of the La Chalmeta housing cooperative, which will also be a community space dedicated to the social and solidarity economy and agroecology.
In 2020, the Generalitat de Catalunya launches a plan to convert the casals de gent gran into casals cívics. The existing casal model had turned these facilities into segregated spaces for older adults, disconnected from the community networks of the territory. As a result of this analysis, it is proposed that the kitchens and dining rooms of these facilities be the advance to transform them into more open and intergenerational social and catering spaces.
In this framework, the cooperative Mujeres Pa’lante and LaFundició , launch in the Casal de Gent Gran de Bellvitge a kitchen and restaurant project that bets on sustainable food systems and food sovereignty, with ecological and local products, at popular prices and that ensure both decent working conditions for producers and workers and access to healthy food for all people. In addition, the kitchens-restaurant allow to generate employment opportunities for vulnerable people, such as migrants in irregular administrative situation or young people from the gypsy community of l’Hospitalet, jobs that have been consolidated with the financing of the ACOL aid line of the Servei Públic d’Ocupació de Catalunya (SOC) and the Pla Integral del Poble Gitano.
In 2021 Mujeres Pa’lante ends its participation in the project. LaFundició continues to promote the operation of La Suculenta in the Casal Cívic de Bellvitge and launches a second kitchen in the Casal Cívic del barri Centre.
The current challenges of the project are the increase of daily menus served, the diversification of the clientele and the implementation of a program of social and cultural activities linked to the social economy and sustainable food systems.
If we understand the kitchen as one more element of the food system, we can clearly perceive its cultural and political implications. Conserves Litorals is a community space dedicated to exploring these implications that takes place in the Casa de la Reconciliació, in the neighborhood of Can Serra(l’Hospitalet), with the accompaniment of the artist Marina Monsonís .
LaFundició has been collaborating for years with the Escola Prat de la Manta and the Institut Escola Gornal in processes of collective artistic research on the relations between the educational institution and the built space, both inside and outside the educational centers themselves. In continuity with these investigations, this year it is proposed to transform the schoolyards. The idea was already considered during the days Quin pati volem? held in 2019 in the schools Prat de la Manta and Gornal.
This initiative is in line with the objectives of the Kilombo and considers the use of plant fibers as part of the intervention in the courtyards. The Voltes cooperative designs a series of constructive proposals adapted to the needs of both educational centers: a portable cabin built with reeds in the courtyard of the Prat de la Manta school and a tunnel built with living wicker in both centers.
One of the activities most valued by families and students of Prat de la Manta was the collection of reeds in the surroundings of Cal Trabal , the last agricultural area of l’Hospitalet. This outing led to reflect with the students on the link of the city with the Parc Agrari del Baix Llobregat, the rural environments and on its own agricultural past.
During the months of April to June 2021, in collaboration with the Tarpuna cooperative , a series of workshops have been organized to learn how to compost and make an urban garden, accompanied by Aurora Sierra Canti (agricultural engineering, trainer and dynamizer in orchards and collaborator of Tarpuna).
The workshops have been developed in the Institut Escola Gornal, in the Casa de la Reconciliació and the two casals cívics where the kitchens-restaurant La Suculenta are located (Bellvitge and barri Centre). The urban garden workshops have been developed in Prado 11, the space of LaFundició in Bellvitge, with the participation mainly of children neighbors of the space and in the Casa de la Reconciliació, with neighbors of La Florida and Can Serra who also participate in the space Conserves Litorals .
Beyond the workshops, the project contemplates the continuity of the action so that the composters built in the casals cívics will be used to process and reuse the organic waste of the kitchens-restaurant La Suculenta, and in the same way the composter of the Institut Escola Gornal will be used in the school canteen and that of the Casa de la Reconciliació will be used to compost the waste generated in the kitchen space Conserves Litorals . Similarly, the urban gardens built with growing tables in LaFundició and in the Casa de la Reconciliació, are integrated into the community dynamics of these spaces.
Through the promotion of community management of organic waste and its reuse for cultivation in urban environments, it is intended to raise awareness about the economic and ecological relations associated with our food consumption. It also serves to value logics and ways of doing historically linked to rural environments and subsistence economies different from extractivist capitalism.
LHenbici is an initiative of the environmental association La Saboga of l’Hospitalet for the promotion of sustainable mobility, which includes a project of cyclological services. LHenbici participates in the Kilombo project with the distribution of the baskets of the Keras Buti agroecological consumer cooperative and the home delivery of menus from the La Suculenta restaurants in Bellvitge and barri Centre.
