Various activities were planned for the group from Moldova and Romania’s stay. One project in the big project of this trip was the creation of a work of art in a public space. In the province of Valencia, home to the ceramics industry, it was clear that the choice would fall on trencadis.

So the young people prepared ceramic tiles to be used for a large mosaic. The first step was to choose the colors and make the fragments of the right size. After that it was important to sort the colors well. This work took place in the CASAdelDRAGON ARTCAMP.

A second group prepared old pallets for the #buenavistacervera project. Pallets were dismantled and sorted and nails were removed.

At the end of the working day there was pizza from the oven.

This moment was also used to come into contact with other families and young people. Romanian, Spanish, German and English alternated in the conversations. The ARTCAMP connects people across cultural and national borders. The language in which communication seems best possible is always chosen.

Online diary:
Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11

On the first day a group agreed to go shopping. As a reward, the young people were able to be the first to come to the sea and enjoy the beach in Vinaros.

In the afternoon there was an introduction to the history of Spain, the village and its residents. The tour led up to the castle, to the current excavations and to the tower with the nice view to the Ebro Delta.

The young people were impressed by how the village has developed since the Moors were driven out.

The ApeaL youth association has been working with young people for many years. It is the third visit from Romania and the first from Moldova at CASAdelDRAGON.

A main motive of the club is to give young people (age 12 – 18) the chance to gain self-confidence through active social action and to gain courage for all the challenges that will come in their lifes soon. The tools include regular meetings and discussions in the group in order to get feedback, to strengthen self-organization, and to include the young people “at eye level” in the planning of the daily routine.

The visitor from Moldova comes from the area near the border with Romania. The Romanian-speaking minority lives there. For many of the young people it is their first trip away from their homeland, the first big trip of their lives. Romanians are Latinos and have been for over 2000 years. The Caesars in Rome chose their loyal bodyguards from the ranks of the Romanian army. Romanian is more closely related to Latin than Italian. So it’s no surprise that young Romanians can feel right at home in Spain.

Online diary:
Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11

Part of CASAdelDRAGON’s social activities is to provide individuals and groups with low-threshold access to Spanish culture in Maestrazgo. There are many reasons to visit Cervera del Maestre and our Community. Some people come to us for art, some for education. Others are looking for community or cultural exchange.

The non-profit association Apeal from Bucharest told a partner in Moldova about CASAdelDRAGON and both associations organized a visit in 2024. For the period from April 30th until May 11th 10 young people from Moldova and Romania will visit the place, guided by 4 adults.

We are taking this as an opportunity to keep an online diary and will try to post an update from the past day every evening. Then the parents can read along and see what happens in the Year of the Dragon (Chinese calendar), in the Village of the Dragon (Faram) and in the House of the Dragon (CASAdelDRAGON).

Like many larger events, preparation begins long before the group arrives. On day 0 (before arrival) we made a major purchase. It is and always will be a logistical and economic challenge.

Tomorrow the plane will arrive at Castellon de la Plana regional airport.

Online diary:
Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Day 11

About 600 people live in the village of Cervera. Almost 200 of them are not rescued in Spain, but live permanently in this special village in the mountains of Maestrazgo.

The high proportion of foreign citizens characterizes village life. It promotes culture and exchange. And the newcomers are well aware of the privilege they have of being able to live in this village.

Some of them had decided to give something back to the village and its visitors as a gift: a game.

Viking chess is a simple game that can be played by 2-12 people on a flat surface
There are many variations, Tina and Dirk chose a simple one and together we built this game.
Dörte helped a lot with painting the figures.

The game was gifted to the village just before Easter and is open to the public for everyone at Pelota Square. Visitors and curious people came to the inauguration and had a lot of fun.
The official handover then took place with the local primary school.

People often ask what is special about the Familiafeliz community. The idea, concept, procurement, construction and publication of this game as a joint project by friends of CASAdelDRAGON is one such example. The development of the living community is not and should not be limited to the members and permanent guests. Rather, the idea of giving without intention should also have an impact on the environment. That worked brilliantly here.
We thank everyone who contributed.

And we are happy when the residents and visitors of this village share their friends with us… and play together.

KUBB Rules of the game (EN/NL) and (ES/DE) and Press Release (ES) pdf

This is the story of a great love, an old house, a deep long sleep and a wonderful awakening. It is the story of people who slowly but steadily pursue goals. It is the story of a community whose bonds are invisible but also mysteriously strong. It is the story of a staircase, a sculpture that has moved into Pacha Mama’s house. And it is the story of a time of reflection on the essential thing in life, love.

Casa Pacha Mama is a house of our community in the village of Cervera del Maestre in Castellon. The house is several hundred years old and yet one of the newer houses in the village. The development of a winding passageway between the houses of the Moorish settlement was expanded and gave space, hope and protection to a poor family from Catalunya in the late Middle Ages.

Several generations have repeatedly rebuilt the small house and adapted it to the current needs of their lives. Most recently, the first floor was partly used as a chicken coop and the terrace as a rabbit hutch. An old man was the last resident on the ground floor. He looked out of his kitchen through a window the size of a postcard. And went down into the cellar through a rotten wooden hatch in the hallway. After that the house was uninhabited. Nobody was interested in this house at the end of a cul-de-sac, squeezed between other large, stately houses. Then we came…

After almost twenty years of temporary use for helpers in the construction of the large house CASAdelDRAGON, the time had come. We started rebuilding the house. The shell and the first phase of the interior work were completed in 2008. The construction had put a lot of strain on the budget and we first had to try to consolidate. In 2009, the basement room was part of the “Vuelta de Arte” and showed an installation by a Mexican artist.
Until the end of 2023, the building was only used as a warehouse and at times also served as a studio for art production. Then the plan was made to complete the interior expansion.

The spiral staircase as the central connection between the floors had to be built first. The staircase itself, made of iron and wood, was intended to underline the character of the house and was technically a challenge, as a four-level steel structure had to be built in a small space.

Many people helped. Of particular note is Oscar, who welded the central column and the steps together. Dirk and Tina helped make the steps and exits. And many others contributed to us being able to hand over this staircase to the owner as a birthday present on January 31, 2024. She knew nothing, nothing about how far we were, nothing about who had come to the celebration, and nothing about all the preparations for a big, milestone birthday.

Some details on these stairs are connected in a very special way to our community and our lives here in Spain. There was a grate in the basement of the house for over 30 years. We found this in an old garbage dump in the village. Whenever we drove away rubble and came back with something “valuable,” Antje shook her head. She was just happy about a little more space on the construction site and we immediately cleared the space full of treasures for the future… whatever future…

Our old friend Henk DeROOY closed his workshop many years ago. He gave us some objects from his collection. These also included castings with coats of arms and decorations. Henk was a very special person. We have a lot to thank him for. Ultimately, he said the decisive sentence that inspired our decision for this project and this place! Now his gift is a detail in this staircase, and anyone who uses it can notice it and ask about it. Then the birthday child knows the story, about Inge and Henk, about the buses, the furniture transport, the tenant changes in the summer and the old man and the sea (which took his brother from him).

Even after the celebration, construction work will continue. The staircase was a milestone on the way to completing this house and thus a building block in this work of giving friendship and love a place and allowing it to have an effect, in a beautiful village in Maestrazgo.

Life is a building yard. Love shows the way.

Many thanks to: Corinna, Claudia, Holle, Jan, Tina, Dirk, Utz, Irene, Dörte, Oscar…

This is the story of building an oven, and it is the story of non-intentional giving. It’s a story about a world without money, and it’s a story about pleasure.

When two friends began to move their lives from the big city to the country and when they began to create a large garden and when they began to collect and recycle materials, the desire arose to have an oven like the one in the Familiafeliz Art Camp to have to make bread in order to be able to prepare larger quantities of food.

So the wish became reality. The place to build the new stove was found in an old open fireplace with poor ventilation. In addition to ceramic shaped stones, little cement, a lot of lime and even more clay soil from the finca were used to build the oven.

The mixture of clay soil, lime, cement and a little water is suitable for both bricking and plastering the firebox.

Clay is a grateful and dimensionally stable building material if it can dry out in peace and is protected from too much rain.

The construction of the oven was a gift. The goal was to create another place nearby where people can also gather, where friends can meet, cook together, enjoy food preparation and meals together.

Many who visit Familiafeliz ask themselves where the community can be experienced. Often you only see a few people. Many people don’t associate this with community.

In moments like these, when you build a stove like this together, this feeling of community arises. Whoever is there will experience it. Most people come to it later. They are then more attracted to the good smell of the meals. But they no longer experience this special feeling of community. That was the feeling of people who give themselves unintentionally, who do something for themselves, with good consequences for those around them, who walk part of the way together.

The oven is suitable for all sorts of things: you can make pizza in it, fish and meat dishes, especially casseroles, and you can bake bread and cakes.

Since the temperature inside only drops slowly, it is also suitable as a drying cabinet for cooking food after use.

The clay body keeps cracking easily. In the first few months, work is carried out again and again and small hairline cracks are closed with a clay slurry. After a while, no further cracks will form. The clay body glazes a little at temperatures of over 650 degrees in the combustion chamber.

Such an oven dominates a place. He becomes a social magnet. People will always gather in front of it to prepare food together. He will always feed people, a furnace of life that connects people, also in the will to enjoy themselves.

Food is FOOD, a means of life…

You can’t buy an oven like this, you can only get it as a gift, like the friendship of the people who now care for it and use it. Friends who have created their own social space and share with their friends and families.

To walk from Castrop-Rauxel in Germany to Cervera del maestre it takes about 50 days of walking (if you walk 30 km per day). In a human life, with everyday life and life that keeps coming in between, it can sometimes take 14 years.
In 2009, a friend offered to use a shop temporarily to initiate a small art show there. At that time, a few artists from the EL-DRAC network accepted and so the exhibition was set up in one day. Temporary use was and is always an option for art in the industrial region in constant upheaval. The shop was empty. The large shop window did not convey the colorful experience that the landlords wanted.
Again and again the art goes to off-spaces. This often sets in motion a dialogue that goes far beyond the actual location.
When contemporary art dives into the living environment of a changing society, leaving the apparently safe place of the studio, there are always exciting moments.
That was also the case in Castrop-Rauxel. The title of the show was defined as “Silent running”, the homage to an SCI-FI classic on the one hand, and the reference to the art’s quiet incursion into the former Roman camp on two strategic connecting routes.
A few years later, a few kilometers further south-west in Europe, two artists occupied an empty space. Between the exhibitions and other social events, the gallery in the Haus des Drachen was available for a “Flashlight”, a snapshot from the archive of two freelance artists. Again with no public funding and no advertising support, again quietly… and again there’s a chance that the universe will do something…unexpected, nice.

The exhibition is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free entry. There is something to discover from 14 years of contemporary art in Europe.
The people who often stand in the background and who are nevertheless so important for the success of such spontaneous actions should also be reminded here. Thanks go to Annette. She made that possible back then. And now, a few years and a few kilometers further… let’s not forget that. The journey continues: Silent Running 2.

This is the continuation of the story of the social sculpture “Gallinas de Amor” (part 1). It is the story of the continuation of a construction, the story of the people involved and the story of a community that pursues sustainable goals in times of uncertainty and strife. It is also a story of life without a lot of money but with a lot of contentment and happiness.

It’s all, once again, a matter of logistics and access to resources. Who would think that building sand is in demand these days and is a scarce commodity. The sand grains of the deserts of this earth are not suitable because they do not tilt well in the mortar, they are ground round by nature and wind. We can use a local producer and get the sand from nearby.

First, a barrier layer of bitumen mats was laid and bricked on top. This barrier layer later prevents moisture from penetrating from the floor into the walls. If this barrier layer is omitted, the moisture can later loosen the plaster and promote mold growth.

Inserting the front door with building dies before laying the actual wall is a typical improvisation, but it facilitates the use of recycled building materials like those on this door.
The welded anchors can be connected directly to the wall to be erected.

The concrete blocks are easy to brick up and little mortar is required for the joints. This is no comparison to the natural stone walls.

The two exits for the chickens can be seen in the foreground. Later, two small wooden stalls will be separated inside so that groups of pedigree chickens can be kept together or separately in order to generate offspring in a targeted manner.

Art is probably not used in a normal cattle shed. In the chicken coop at Color Garden, art is the primary goal. The house as a concept and in its realization is an art project. It has both a social and an aesthetic component. The glass bottles in the wall later give a broken, colorful play of light inside and loosen up the architecture. But they are also a way to recycle material in an unusual way.

Old single glazed window frames have been refurbished and recycled and become part of the chicken coop.

The front door is already stuck in the wall and could be opened for the first time.

The roof height is reached after only four days.

Rafters are placed as a test and the distance is adjusted to the clay slabs. From this, the number and size of the panels are determined.

The main beam is embedded under the ceiling and later pressed against the rafters from below with building stamps. This creates an optimal connection and the subsequent roof load can be well distributed.

A lot of the work is done elsewhere. A work area will be set up here for the construction of the exits for the chickens.

The guides for the trapdoors for the exits of the chickens are being prepared.

Wooden constructions for the interior are provided, laying nests from old bee boxes, perches, covers for the compartments in the stable, exits for the chickens.

Below the ceiling, a small intermediate floor was installed on one side. This offers storage space that is always necessary for food and tools. This shelf is very solid and also allows heavy loads.

From the stock of ceramic tiles, a selection could be found that fits perfectly and will make regular cleaning easier later on.

The construction of the compartments for the hens in the barn continued. These compartments will later be equipped with a multifunctional connecting door. This means that both areas can be used individually or together. Especially in larger groups with several roosters, it is an advantage if these roosters can avoid each other. It makes keeping multiple roosters easier.

No people were seen in these photos. Nevertheless, many were there and helped. And much remains secret for most. The rafters of this roof come from Germany, they were brought to Spain more than 8 years ago. They should actually be installed elsewhere, but the people who were out and about in the color garden back then are long gone. They left their dreams there. They have moved on, but their strength is also in these materials and we are giving them new life in a new project.
The windows also come from Germany from old houses. Many generations looked through these windows in a rough rural region in the Eifel before they were to be disposed of. We took them with us and kept them in Germany for years, and later in the color garden. Now they have found their place.

A special thanks to Maria and Jens for their help in building the roof and to Mario the builder who gifted us the main beam. These people help with their love and power to create such places. And the least thing is to name it.

It’s going to be a long story. We will publish them in several articles. This will be the first. It is the story of a dream of a single mother in Spain, of a desire to live close to nature with animals, and it is the story of its fulfillment, in times of violence and strife in Europe. It is a symbol of the power of a community to focus on the well-being of its members and to get involved for good. Food is the means of life.

As you can see, they see nothing. No buildings, no sculptures, no art, no chickens, just nature, which had temporarily reclaimed parts of the finca.

Four years earlier, Iris and Kai from Hanover had set metal posts for the chicken coop. After that, the construction site rested and we only occasionally deposited building materials. Clay stones and an iron door patiently awaited the start of construction.

The shepherd’s old shelter was almost invisible. Only the column that had been started and the concrete beams for a new roof construction protruded above the tall grass.

As a beekeeper we need to use part of the color garden as a storage. Beehives, tools, wood… large parts of the Color Garden are a space of possibilities. What amazes many visitors is the apparent disorder, the creative chaos of the artists. One factor is always underestimated. The seemingly disorganized storage of materials fuels the process of creative problem solving. Beyond public funding and without sponsors and patronage, we have to create many solutions from the recycled resources.

Logistics is a very important factor in site organization. Access roads, intermediate storage. All of this needs to be well thought out. The upcoming construction site requires good planning. The materials are heavy and therefore difficult to move, and unnecessary multiple movements cost a lot of time and energy. This organization is difficult for many lay people to understand and it requires experience to recognize its importance.

Then the grass was cut with a brush cutter.

More building material was collected. Among other things, the remains of drainage pipes for drainage were brought under the floor slabs of the chicken coops that were still to be produced. These come from a construction site in Germany and had waited 18 years for a meaningful use.

Tree care offered itself before the actual construction began. The wild olive trees are still waiting for later refinement. Now a strong pruning was announced.

The dog Lulu is managing the scene.

The excavation for the strip foundations represents the first actual start of construction.

And more…

And more…

And more…

For the foundation, concrete blocks were brought in for living formwork (formwork that will later be part of the structure).

The stones were stored close to where they would later be used to facilitate the work.

Rubble to fill up the subsoil was approached. Hard-working helpers from Germany and Spain lend a hand. A social sculpture is a social activity where people can have a special experience. The “Gallinas de Amor” project goes back to Francesca’s desire to keep chickens in the Color Garden. Familiafeliz as a “facilitator” provides the resources and organizes the infrastructure.

There is an agreement with local construction companies that they can dump construction waste on the finac. We then look for valuable building material and the construction companies later drive the rest away to the dump. This saves you money, because disposing of rubble is expensive. And we receive valuable materials free of charge, natural stones, old clay tiles, ceramics for trencadis…

The rubble has an important function. It reduces the volume of the concrete slab to be poured. It creates cavities for ventilation under the concrete slab and allows the drainage pipe to collect moisture from under the concrete slab and release it to the outside.

About 70% of the work on a construction site is accounted for by the preparation and follow-up of the actual work.

After two hours in the early morning, the concrete slab was ready as the foundation for the first chicken coop.

In times like these, when many people are losing their social contacts, it is a joy and a zest for life to achieve goals together. This foundation weighs over 7 tons, houses a message in a bottle for the future, and will become the base of the new chicken coop.

Thanks to Antje, Corinna, Dilan and Kim. And a big thanks to Francesca for the tireless work in the sun and the strength to make this dream come true.