General Assembly 2026, 11.00 – 14.00.
Participants: Aye, Csilla, Dani, Fern, Jaime, Jason, Joan, Klee, Mar, Mikoto, Monique, Nappie, Pavel, Siddiq.
Agenda:
Renewal of the Board of Directors
Review of the 2025 Finances
What Has Happened Over the Past Year and a Half, and Our Plans for the Rest of 2026
Co-organization and Collective Building
Review of the Statutes
Etc.
- Renewal of the Board of Directors.
Fabi, the previous secretary, has recently stepped down, so the current board has only two people (three is the legal minimum). A long conversations about liabilities and responsibilities follows. In the past, board members have not always been actively involved on the ground and built ties with the local community, which is seen as a challenge. In the end, several people step forward to join the board.
Vote:
Everyone agrees with Mar replacing Fabi as secretary.
Everyone agrees with Dani replacing Suma as treasurer.
Everyone agrees with Aye joining the board as vocal (a member without a specific agenda).
Everyone agrees with Dennis joining the board as vocal.
Csilla stays on as president.
So, the new board: Csilla, Mar, Dani, Aye, and Dennis. There is a wide understanding that the board is a legal necessity, and that the theoretical duties of specific board members (president, secretary, treasurer) do not need to coincide with their actual roles.
- Review of the 2025 finances.
This work has not been done, but will be done in the following weeks by Csilla, Dani, and Dennis. Lack of access to bank account and/or books stood in the way. In the future, when someone is unable to fulfill a task, it should be communicated.
- What Has Happened Over the Past Year and a Half, and Our Plans for the Rest of 2026.
In August, we have a forging event organized with the support of the Concello de Ourol. Hopefully it rekindles some ties with the local community.
What will happen in the long term is somewhat unclear; the “Occupy the Foundry” call was only put online a week or so ago, and has not yet been widely circulated.
Jason suggests joining the steward group and taking responsibility for the facilities; he plans to be here on and off in the foreseeable future. Everyone agrees.
Siddiq and Fern propose doing retreats around ecotechnologies and connection to the earth. The idea is to “occupy” the space for one or two years, but without ignoring the history of the project and its communal nature. They are still figuring out if the Foundry is the best space for their project and will develop a proposal if they decide they want to go ahead.
- Co-organization and Collective Building.
Aye brings up the topic of memory. There’s several aspects to this question; on the one hand, there is the sense that sometimes work is lost or not cared for because of a lack of continuity due to changing residents. The Foundry is always bigger than whoever lives there at the moment, and work can be done to visibilize what was there before. This might also help the integration in the surrounding community, which is something the Foundry is currently struggling with.
There are several ideas about how to establish and retain a sense of what happened here before – both in the last 500 years and in the last 8 years since the project started. There are ideas to collect information, documents, photos, and make them accessible. Perhaps a part of the church can house a museum, if we make it in a way that it won’t be moved around (the museum that was in the salon seems to have disappeared). Another is to reactivate the blog and use it for this purpose (everyone who starts a project here can post about it).
Dennis will try to put some old blog posts back on the site and backdate them (the site moved twice and the whole history was lost). Aye, Dani, Jason and Dennis will form a memory working group.
There are different and sometimes conflicting concepts of what care of the land entails and what the surroundings should look like. This topic is too big for the GA. For now, the land will be cleaned and cows will be put to pasture. There is some hope that documenting land care might improve continuity.
Siddiq notes that continuity in the steward group has also been a challenge, and that necessary information is not always well communicated. Onboarding needs to happen more carefully, things need to be documented and transmitted to whoever comes after.
There’s an agreement to do a weekly volunteer assembly on cleaning day (Tuesday) around 5pm, and a weekly house assembly on Thursdays.
- Review of the Statutes.
Dennis explains Lila and he have made a draft for new Foundry statutes, but there are still a few open questions – both for the community and for a legal expert. The long-term objective is to collectivize the site by moving its property into the association and protecting it with an asset lock (with Futuro Habitable as a veto member of the Foundry association). However, before this can happen, the Foundry needs to be socially sustainable for a few years, and build up some capital to pay the taxes associated with a property transfer (these taxes are not based on the amount paid, but on the value of the building).
While at some point the statutes will need to be changed, until these other topics remain unresolved, there is no real urgency to this. Moreover, one of the changes will be that future changes (at least of most of the content) will become almost impossible; otherwise a simple majority could simply change the statutes again and remove the asset lock. So we need to get it right, and probably we need some more professional legal support. We could go over the new statutes now, but it would take too much time. However, the proposed statutes can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1z7GsEo8x7QbO-ZgtDV8eil7Vl13GgQz6M-C8i-AxJn4/edit?usp=sharing
It’s a work in progress; commentary is welcome.
- Etc.
We received a request through Oli to open the space to people who had to be evacuated because of the forest fires around Madrid. Now the house is full, so hosting a family is probably impossible, but as the world will see more and more refugees, it’s a topic that might require some more conversation. But hosting refugees can also be a challenge; they carry trauma, they have little resources, and the Foundry is not always the right place for them. Clay (Klee) will open a working group, and we will collectively try to formulate what we can offer and how to decide if this is a good place for people.
If I forgot to note something, let me know. And thanks to Oli for the image.