MONDRAGON in the exhibition "Mars, the red mirror" at the Center de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

On February 18, MONDRAGON arrived at Mars in the Perseverance robot within NASA's Mars 2020 mission. On this trip, the Goimek cooperative, integrated into Danobatgroup and dedicated to high-precision machining, collaborated in the manufacture of the antenna of the vehicle that, during its journey through the red planet, is collecting data on the geological past of the planet, sounds of its surface and even possible signs of life.

A week later, on February 25, the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) opened the exhibition "Mars, the red mirror" which tries to "address our link with Mars from ancient times to the present day". This exhibition coincides with the arrival of three space missions to Mars, an ideal moment to inquire about "our condition and our future as a species and about the ultimate nature of the universe we inhabit."

The "MONDRAGON initiative"

And MONDRAGON occupies a space in that show. Not because of Goimek's recent contribution to Perseverance, but through the American novelist Kim Stanley Robinson, a reference in the science fiction genre, author of three novels about Mars: "Red Mars", "Green Mars" and "Blue Mars". After that trilogy, Stanley published "2312", a book in which he includes MONDRAGON as the paradigm of a new socio-economic model of collaboration and solidarity in the face of the capitalist system. A license from the author, who declares himself a MONDRAGON enthusiast and who puts our cooperative experience at the service of his work to solve some of the challenges of his imagined solar system of the future.

Kim Stanley presents MONDRAGON as the paradigm of a new socio-economic model of collaboration and solidarity in his book "2312".

And the CCCB has decided to incorporate MONDRAGON into that exhibition on the red planet with an aerial photo of Arrasate-Mondragón in one of its panels and an express reference to the passage from the American writer's novel. In short, a closer approach "between incunabula books, sculptures, drawings, comics, films, handwritten documents, collector's items and even a Martian meteorite" to publicize the artistic, literary and scientific creation about Mars. 

Kim Stanley, in an interview published by "El Cultural" in July 2013, in which referring to the "example of Mondragón" pointed out that "the first time I heard about Mondragón and its cooperative system was when I was writing my books on Mars, that is, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mondragon is widely known in leftist theoretical communities around the world, as it represents a living example of an alternative to standard capitalism. It is famous in those circles, as the state from Kerala in India, the Italian city of Bologna, the self-management experiment in Yugoslavia, and some other trials of alternatives. "