marinaleda

Hancox notes, “In most parts of the capitalist world, ‘another world is possible’ is just an idealistic rallying cry. In Marinaleda, it’s an observable fact.”

the mayor is described by Hancox as seeing “no… discrepancy in devoting as much attention and passion to the local specifics of the pueblo – the need to start planting artichokes this month, not pimentos – as he does to the big picture, persuading the world that only an end to capitalism will restore dignity to the lives of billions.”

Citing Orwell’s reflections on “‘that strange and moving experience’ of believing in a revolution,” Hancox offers the reader a rare chance to believe, to relive his own encounter with the village and the mayor who “drained the capitalist-realist defeatism out of me and carried me halfway back to adolescence.”

For Hancox, the reality of Marinaleda was once again made vivid in a discussion with an olive oil factory employee nicknamed El Bigotes (“The Mustache”) of the village’s first years of struggle. El Bigotes “transmitted a similar excitement to that I’ve seen on the faces of young members of Spain’sindignados: the intense thrill that comes from determinedly standing together against the status quo and announcing you are going to make something new. The ineffable, irrepressible subjectivity of solidarity.”

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