OS SENTIRES DO MONTE
2024
Celebration, Self-Protection Plan, and Video
Gondomar Woodlands, Galicia
The process of participation and mediation highlighted the present and future life of the forests, the links with the territory and a unique way of life, which found in this environment not only a space for leisure and recreation, but also a source of wealth. Thus, far from imagining and planning its exploitation, the desire of the community is to generate a sustainable, multifunctional and self-sufficient model in the long term, from an economic but also social perspective and, above all, an attractive model for new generations to take over and give continuity to this legacy of community management.
Montes de Couso, located in Gondomar (Pontevedra), is one of the many commonwealths of forests that exist in Galicia and is made up of 84 commoners who manage 330 hectares of forest, of which three hundred are productive.
Since the beginning of 2023, this community has been working hand in hand with the mediator Natalia Balseiro in Tierra Común de Concomitentes, an initiative framed in the European project Art Living Lab for Sustainability, which seeks to promote innovation ecosystems to achieve artistic solutions based on nature.
After a year of participatory and mediation work that highlighted the value of life, present and future, and the way of doing of these forests, the contemporary artist Asunción Molinos Gordo (1979, Guzmán, Burgos) was chosen to develop an artistic process that makes known the forms of management of the communal forest so that new generations perpetuate its legacy.
Thus Tierra Común entered a second phase of work, in which the artist initiated different meetings - combining research, exploration of the territory, accumulation of knowledge about the communal forests, generation of links and opening of new conversations and dialogues - to give shape to a work that responds to the wishes defined by the community members, and that will bear fruit in October 2024.
The artist, Asunción Molinos Gordo, presented on Saturday, October 12, 2024, the outcome of her artistic-participatory process with the Montes de Couso community, which materialized in the ritual celebration Os sentires do monte. The event consisted of a walk through the communal woodlands, with several stops at meaningful sites, where a series of actions were carried out in relation to the elements that make up the mountain.
This collective celebration, which lasted the entire day from 11 in the morning, aimed to highlight the power of community management of this territory. It was designed in collaboration with the residents of Couso, members of the communal land management community, and neighboring communities; the artist herself; and the mediator of the Terra Común project, Natalia Balseiro, through several working sessions held over the previous months.
Two years of work and a path that continues
This artistic, ritualistic, and celebratory proposal marked the culmination of two years of work with the Terra Común project, which since 2023 had developed an artistic-participatory process that highlighted the present and future life of the woodlands, as well as the connection to the land as a way of life and prosperity. Over the past two years, the Montes de Couso community, through extensive mediation efforts, carried out an exercise in imagining a common desire: to raise awareness among neighboring communities and younger generations of a sustainable, multifunctional, and self-sufficient long-term model for their territory, while also seeking to ensure the continuity of this legacy of community land management for generations to come.
A ritual that marks a beginning
In addition to the ritual celebration, which is intended to become an annual event, the artistic process also resulted in a Self-Protection Plan for the Mountain, which recognizes the rights of these woodlands and was designed by the artist based on the collective work sessions.
This document, inspired by other similar initiatives such as the 2022 law granting legal personhood to the Mar Menor in Murcia and the Tins River in Outes, Galicia, aims to safeguard the future of these community-managed territories and inspire similar models elsewhere.
The content of this Self-Protection Plan, the result of various meetings between the artist, the mediator, and the working group (made up of community members, neighbors, and members of other communal land communities), included topics such as care, protection, use, production, and the transmission of knowledge within the territory.
1st Action:
Call to the Mountain
With these elements and deep research work on each one of them, the Fiesta-Ritual is made up of a series of actions that began in the Mirador de San Antoniño after the call to clean the mountainain by the oldest members of the community with the Buguinas from A Guarda, recovering an ancient method to call community members to clean the mountains. The call to the mountainain was made by Iria Enríquez Blandón, Paloma Amigo García, Pepe Reñones Rodríguez and Luis Alonso Bagacigalupe.
3rd Action:
Food
They ate together, celebrated that they are here and alive. They put their bodies to make the feast, the rite and the ritual their own. A stop at the Souto Chan das Eiras where they shared the food offered by the mountainain: one hundred kilos of wild boar donated by the Sociedade de Caza la Gondomarense, cooked by the specialist cook in game meat Eva Florentiña from Gondomar, washed down with house wine from the vineyards of the villages linked to the mountainain and accompanied by chestnut and mushroom pies from the mountainains of Couso cooked between the Bar Gondomar and the Bakery O Penisco (Gondomar).
2nd Action :
Water
They walked together to the source of the Couso River where the water that makes life possible in this area originates. Xosé Antón Araúxo, José Manuel Lago, Iria Enríquez Blandón and Asunción Molinos Gordo shared ancestral and collective knowledge and practices about what water can do, presenting the Rabilonga or the horse that signals drinking water. They unveiled the practices of planting water and performed gestures in community inspired by the irrigation communities, where water is shared among all beings.
1st Action:
Call to the Mountain
With these elements and deep research work on each one of them, the Fiesta-Ritual is made up of a series of actions that began in the Mirador de San Antoniño after the call to clean the mountainain by the oldest members of the community with the Buguinas from A Guarda, recovering an ancient method to call community members to clean the mountains. The call to the mountainain was made by Iria Enríquez Blandón, Paloma Amigo García, Pepe Reñones Rodríguez and Luis Alonso Bagacigalupe.