Vegetarian Eco Village

In the Ecovillage all the activities, buildings, small gardens, etc. are based in the principles and outlines of permaculture. We have communal gardens to cover both the daily food needs and the cyclical (cereals, olive oil and fruit …).

The Ecovillage has community buildings for the activities we share in the day to day basis: repair workshops and bakery, projection room, dining room, training room, spaces for meditation, school and leisure, as well as a place of exchange or sale of the Community products.

All the people who live in our village, dedicate a weekly time to the community tasks. We all help each other and make life easier and more fun.

In the ecovillage, all our activities and relationships are driven by the heart, as well as by a sincere respect for people and their differences. Spiritually, we feel the unity within us, and as unity with the Universe, we share and express this energy, helping each other and helping, thus, achieving a path of wisdom and awareness, in all the areas of our lives.

Our experience should be free of burdens and debts that would force and condition us to a rhythm of economic activity, making us prisoners in this strange wheel and alien to our true being, moving us away from our most intimate and real needs.

We have opted for vegetarianism without alcohol, tobacco or drugs. Throughout our space, our actions are respectful of nature, not killing or selling animals.

We intend to be an object of awareness in all the themes and values that are practiced on a daily basis, in relation to one another, to Mother Earth and to the Universe. So, while we act, as an example of practical discernment incorporating ourselves in the harmony and balance of nature, we also feel that we have to act from consciousness and not from violence, as a motor of expansion within and around us.

We reduce our dependence on money to the indispensable. We assume free shared education, where children can grow up with respect for an individual development, for their true needs, for stimulating self-esteem, teamwork and empowering the natural and unique abilities and resources that accompany them.

We cooperate in community, health, education and, food. Each one in their space helping each other and also sharing activities, the land and individual and group growth.

We live in connection with love, the earth, the simplicity, the peace and the awakening of the consciousness that brings us wisdom and takes us closer to our centre, linked to the reality that comes from our hearts.

ATZAR

My awakening was at age 14. I began to connect with my being and started a path of activism and transformation, focused on inner growth, but also determined to help others on this path of evolution to a better world.

Over time, I have been integrating experiences and greater awareness in everything around me – spirituality, in ecology, self-sufficiency, free education, respect for life on the planet, health – with a view to justice, equality and, above all, to a world of love among all beings.

At one point in my life, I felt that I had to experience in a day-to-day life the best world I had ever wanted and sought. So together with my partner, we prepared and founded the beginning of this new world, through the daily reality of living in community, in an ecovillage.

The purpose is to foster an energy that allows the connection of our lives with that being of love that inhabits our interior, so that it can flourish, by giving, receiving and expanding, in harmony with all of nature.

Here we are, keeping this energy alive, so that it can be united to others and we can contribute, through our example, showing that yes, another life is possible.

I am thankful for seeing and living a dream that came true.

XENIA

I came from a traditional family, in which a fixed job was highly valued, with a salary “guaranteed” at the end of the month; the much appreciated economic security. Within the education that it was transmitted to me, I have studied Biology and, even before finishing the course, I was already working in the quality department of a large multinational. I have kept this job for a long time, however, other interests were emerging, that allowed me to discover other ways of being in life. I did a lot of research on personal growth and psychology and that transformed my life. Personal transformation, for me, is the beginning of global transformation.

When Atzar and I began to live together 19 years ago, he was living in the country (another of my great passion, the nature), in a small village near Barcelona. In 2006, I attended a permaculture course with a family that lived in a self-sufficient way. Suddenly, I have realized that another way of life was possible, in a greater contact with our essence. From then on, together we share the dream of promoting a family project, in community, in nature, acting in diverse fields – health, food, ecology, spirituality – where our children’s experience can be of a free education, based on respect.

In 2008, with 49 years old, I quit working at the multinational (where I’ve been 29 years) and I launch into life with love and passion. We arrived in Portugal to live in a wonderful place that the universe allowed us to find. With the realization of the “Spiral Vegetarian Ecovillage” project, the dream has become a reality, through day-to-day sharing with other elements of the community, growing and learning together, respecting the nature that surrounds us.

ÁFRICA

My transition process started in 2012, when my husband Guillermo and I decided to leave Spain, to leave our “comfort zone” to have, together with our children, the opportunity to know other cultures, new ways of life. I had always worked in our small family business – a driving school. My awakening came with our little boy’s school problems. I researched and had the wonderful opportunity to discover that there are other ways of being and doing, not only in terms of education, but also in food and health, different from the parameters I was taught. Little by little, we have realized that the change of paradigm is something very deep, it is a transformation of life and we have decided to look for a place where we could live according to our principles, in a natural way, without being in struggle with the elements, as happens in today’s society. So, we found the “Espiral Ecovillage”, our paradise, and we moved here in 2015.

GUILLE

I left my homeland (Colombia) when I was 25; so when Africa, my wife, proposed that we leave Spain and look for another place to live, that was not a new experience for me. Until then, I had worked in different types of jobs in both countries, and my last job was as an instructor in the family driving school. We have 3 children, born in 1998, 2001 and 2006. What marked the difference towards the transformation were the difficulties felt by our youngest son, in the college. Fortunately we were able to listen to his heart, feel his personal drama and seek solutions, thinking exclusively of him, leaving aside conventions and schemes that had always guided our minds. In this way, we made the great journey of our life: a true paradigm shift. For this, it does not matter the Country where you are but your ability to open the mind and see beyond. At Ecovillage we found a place where we can live in a simple way, without artifice that leads us to think that life is more complicated than it really is.

ACTIVITY SCHEDULE

Area	Activity	Time
Health in general (physical, emotional)	Toxins of cosmetic products	1 h
Health in general (physical, emotional)	CIRCLE OF LIFE = We share our past, present and future dreams.	2 h
ALIMENTAÇÃO, SAÚDE, ECOLOGIA	Como combinar os alimentos em cada refeição	2 h
ALIMENTAÇÃO, SAÚDE, ECOLOGIA	Diferentes temas: Transgénicos, açúcar, vegetarianismo, alimentação ecológica…..	1-2 h
SPIRITUALITY AND CONSCIOUSNESS	Practiced mindfulness	30′
	How to communicate: “The four agreements”	2 h
	Is my life a coincidence? Introduction to Biological Decoding	2 h
	Where do we come from and where are we going?	1 h
	Yoga Initiation Practice	30′
	Meditation chakras	1 h
	Workshop: Feeling love in hugs	1 h
CONSCIOUS TOURS	A walk of silence, discovering the inner peace	3 h
	Tour through our interior beauty, first walk in Ecovillage	2 h
	Penetrating our wild and sacred part. Ride of the two rivers and the sacred trees	3 h
	Connecting with the spirit and wisdom of our grandparents. Ride to the grandmothers pyramid	3 h
	Reaching the sky. Nose Ride of the World.	All day
	Flying over the valley. Hiking to Peru.	2 h
	Letting the energy flow, walk to the pond of the cataract.	All day
	Bathing with the moon, a swim in the river at night.	1 h
	Circle of the Valley, circle the route to Cavez	All day
	Pyramid of the mountains	All day
CINE FORUM	FILM FORUM = film the documentary, related to some of the pillars of the Ecovillage and with later debate	2 h
EDUCATION	Visit our school and talk about free education	1’30 h
EDUCATION	Different conversations and Sharing about education	1 h
WORKSHOPS and SELF-SUFFICIENCY	Initiation to wood lathe	20′
	Soap-making workshop	1 h
	Workshop “Atrapasonhos”	1 h
	Workshop tooth paste	1 h
	Workshop soap	3 h
COMMUNITY	Participate in community activity
	Participate in some Eco-Debate
	What are Ecovillages?	1-2 h
	Welcome chat	2 h
	Circle incorporation process	1 h
	Ecovillage Operation	1-2 h
	How Ecovillage land came to us	1 h
	Growth and Decrease	2 h
	Feeling the past, to improve Ecovillage	1 h
	Circle thanking	1 h
	Songs and dances of Ecovillage	2 h