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Montenoso is an experimental epistemic community whose context of investigation and action are the communities of mountains in common hands in Galiza (North of Spain). These mountains are properties protected by Germanic law that transcend the public-private dichotomy, since they are collective properties. They represent practically 25% of the Galician territory. More than 150,000 community members participate in the management of this territory that covers more than 700,000 hectares. Thus, and thanks to its magnitude and the type of property on which it is based, we see that it is a common reality with great affection.

(Re) thinking and (re) updating discourses around the commons [as well as its mechanisms, dynamics, praxis, achievements, dark points …] and connecting them with other manifestations of the commons is an exercise of commitment to reality. It allows breaking with homogenizing discourses about the residual and marginal of these realities. The commons and specifically the neighboring mountains in common hands, are the source of possibilities and futures; as a result, it is necessary to mediate connections between different agents and activate strategies of contagion and transfer to other areas, which also affect this reality.

Investigating the experiences of the commons as real alternatives on the fringes of capitalist property management is a necessary and urgent exercise. The deep knowledge of these centuries-old knowledge and practices is essential in this moment of change. This is the main input of Montenoso, a trans-disciplinary contemporary creation community, which seeks to comprehensively address the reality of the comunal land in Galicia and connect it with the movement around agroecology, hacker culture, social movements , research around the commons, expanded pedagogy, ethnography, or social communication.

Montenoso received an award at the prestigious Ars Electrónica 2014, an honorable mention in the Digital Communities community. It was the first Galician project awarded at this international festival held in Linz, Austria.


Function: Co-Coordination
Devices: collaborative cartography, a wiki, different research, the installation of common geographies of the Commonwealth as well as the participation and collaboration in the defense of the communities of their own mountains, against the processes of encirclement
Budget: indeterminate
Temporality: 2013 –
Image by: Montenoso