A circle as landscape
On 4 December, the commissioners and the mediator, Alfredo Escapa, went on a tour of Navafría and Solanilla, one of the places where the installation of the energy infrastructure is planned.
For some months now, in the concomitance Narrativas Solares we have been meeting each other in the Leonese region of La Sobarriba. to understand what our feelings are and what we what we want to do in the face of the energy crisis that is already here, as well as with the future implementation of a macro solar park in this region.. After meeting in the halls of the town hall of Valdefresno and in old schools converted into “teleclubs”, we decided that it was necessary to set foot on the land that was going to be invaded by the solar panels, to see the real dimension outside a map. And even though it was the 4th of December and the weather forecast promised cold and snow, we got together to walk between Navafría and Solanilla; one of the places where the effect on the environment, animals, crops and people will be felt the most if this energy infrastructure is finally carried out.
There was no snow, but there was a cold sun in which we took refuge in front of the church. Little by little, 18 people gathered around a young tree that had been planted in front of their door, and as the walk went on, the number varied until we reached 20. This circle reminds me, with all due respect and distance, of the open council that Pope, from Navafría, later names: “We talk a lot about democracy, but we are not capable of having an open council to govern our villages, and there is nothing more democratic than an open council”.” (The open council is a system of organisation in which entities of a territorial scope smaller than the municipality are governed by means of an assembly system to make decisions that affect them on a day-to-day basis).
This idea of a circle, of a council or of new commons constantly hovers over this walk and other meetings we have had in the past. It flies over us like the birds that accompanied us during the day. Daniela, from Solanilla, stops and tells us: “Those three birds are black crows. The smallest one is probably the young. La Sobarriba is, together with another in Andalusia, the only area in Europe where they breed cooperatively. If they go outside, they stop breeding, just as if you bring them in from outside, they start breeding. ”There is a lot to learn,“ says another neighbour. There is a lot of particularity in this territory, a lot of invisible treasure to the eyes not taught to see the little things. Particularities that have allowed and still allow life, despite not being easy here, to be a joy for the senses. A life that we see in each other in the eyes of these strollers full of desire to create something.
This circle, which we created spontaneously to tell and listen to each other, accompanies us all along the way. As when We stop to look at the territory that the solar panels will occupy, or when we see the land that will no longer be cultivated, or when we visualise the fenced roads that will not be crossed by roe deer and wild boar because wild animals never walk in a place where they are likely to be hunted. is so high, or when an absent-minded hound approaches its prey, or when we see the energy evacuation route that will cross the villages of Solanilla, Villacil and Villavente on the way to La Robla.
At times, too, we were silent, listening to other stories. Like the story of Marina, from Villavente, who tells us how years ago, the women of that village stopped a rubbish dump in their hills by playing cards day and night in the middle of the road where the trucks bringing the rubbish came from.. This story speaks volumes about what the inhabitants of this land are like, and can give us clues to this concomitance.
In one of the previous meetings someone spoke of how beautiful the landscape of this region was; Daniela, who was born in Italy, called it the Tuscany of Leon, and with this phrase we began to talk about its sunrises and sunsets, its trees and bushes, its forests, its beeches, its its dry landscapes swaying in the wind, the tracks of the wolves that sometimes venture here to hunt and the springs of water that flow from the hillsides..
When, during the walk, we stop for the fourth time and make this circle to talk, to the north we can clearly see the central mountains of the province of Leon to the north and the Picos de Europa to the northeast. In the future, there will also be windmills in this landscape. While the participants are still talking, the following comes to my mind a phrase by Cristina Rivera Garza that I read recently: “We know, of course, that the landscape is not there inert and definitive. We know that the landscape is only half natural. What happens between the horizon and the gaze: that is the landscape”.”[1]. And what is happening right now between the horizon and the gaze are these neighbours, this concomitance, this circle where they can come together and tell what they are doing and who they are.
Fran, from Villavente, said a few days ago that we would have to create a common place from which to tell each other (in the amplitude that this plural has), and this place in the open air already begins to say a lot about what we are as human beings and what we are in relation to the other non-human inhabitants of the territory.
[1] Rivera Garza, C. (2017) There was a lot of fog or smoke or I don't know what. Random House, Barcelona
When, at the end of the walk, let's have lunch at the old school in Navafría and we feel less lonely in this “David against Goliath” fight.” (as Carol, from Villaseca, said during the walk that she had felt in previous, more individual fights), and we started to plan the next meeting before Christmas in Villavente, and another meeting to feel less “Davides”, getting together with other collectives of the province and the state that fight for a just ecological transition., and we extend a calendar for the whole year 2023 to co-design what we want to do so that the voice and the landscape represented by the women who are currently in this circle can be heard.
See the full photo gallery of the event here.
