This is a post for YOU. If you are part of the rainbow movement and interested in scouting a location in spain please have a closer look to our living community and our projects here in east spain between Barcelona and Valencia.
We have set up a social space for years and welcome between 50 and 200 visitors per year. Most of them are interested in our social art projects ( alternative living community, agriculture, bioconstruction, education).
If you want to know more about our last events and happenings you find more in our news section here.
If you like to have a closer look to our community principals check out our service section here.
If you are interested in alternative education (informal learning, home schooling, no schooling) or if you like to explore a warmer place for winter in Spain, you are welcome.
We have already an artist camp with some very basic infrastructure and we like to develop this more and more.
IMPORTANT: Please use our form to apply for a visit. We get a lot of requests and we can not welcome a lot of visitors at the same time (beside organised festivals and gatherings 🙂 of course). If you come with your own tend or van and organise your food by yourself the place to stay is free (limited days, no alcohol, no drugs)!
In late 2018 we where invited to have a closer look to Permacultura Penyaflor near Tortosa. The location is founded and maintained by Checile. She is a powerful permaculture activist and she is running several workshops and initiatives over the year.
Cecile will mount her own signpost in 01 January of 2019 as part of a local celebration. We will publish here in a short time details of the event and usefull information to arrive.
If you are interested to join this informal network of alternative locations use our application to set up your own post. This social art work is free to join for everyone without any specific permission. Just mount your post and calculate angles and distance to your favorite locations and give your visitors a sign that there is much more out there to discover.
Thanks to Arlo for helping to mount the arrow to the beautiful place from Cecile.
With the internet lots of encounters are being made every time a person uses social networking or reads other peoples’Â blogs. Whether it is the “friend” on Facebook one talks to once in a while or the virtual village in your Instagram timeline – with some of the people one doesn’t even know their real name, with others one develops a personal friendship over the time.
With Lea and me the second thing happened, without much effort from both sides. We were both reading and commenting about the others lives and thoughts on their blogs, where we have been writing about family stuff and raising little children and about motherhood in general. Lea was (blog-wise) on our side , while we planned going to Spain in the beginning of the year and commented through doubts and questions and put in some ideas and encouragement when necessary.
Therefore, when I read about their travel during the parental leave to Portugal, I invited her and her family for a stop in Cervera on the way. The plans developed and we invited them to put their tent up in the garden for a couple days…
Camping with a baby and one under three… and the laundry doesn’t stop…
But, as plans never work out as you expect them, we were supposed to have the worst rain in the whole year (and probably also the worst in the last five years). Just s h o w i n g the garden was a quite wet experience, not to mention how the heck they were supposed to set up a tent there and stay in the rain with two children under 3…. not very comfortable camping experience…
So we spontaneously invited them into our flat and even though we just knew each other a couple hours in reality, it felt like a long friendship. Our husbands were a bit sceptically in the beginning to (on the one side) visit people which one hasn’t seen before and (on the other had) inviting someone for a couple days without knowing if the chemistry would be right – but luckily it was right!
Rain, rain, rain in the garden – well, we made the best out of it!
After one rainy night in our small guestroom with literally no space to move, (with all the mattresses occupying the floor), they were able to set up their tent in the garden. With the art camp in the summer all needed bathroom facilities had been set up, so it was almost like “glamping” (=glamour camping). For the children it was adventurous enough and they had a great time in the garden.
Popular garden game: Cracking almonds
We did some trips together and showed them the region – and even had one last swim in the sea, before autumn arrived.
Real shoes instead of sandals – but we still entered the waves
Then the big flood was being announced, and the family had to bundle up their tent in the middle of the night. And one night earlier than planned they continued their way to Portugal. In retrospect, a good decision – without a ship, they wouldn’t have been able to stay dry in the garden during the big rainfalls… or could you imagine a tent here…?
Garden under water… literally…
But because we all fit together quite well, because Lea and her husband liked the village a lot and the children got along as well, they visited us again last week on their way back from Portugal to Germany. Five weeks have passed during the two visits, and primarily you could see the time passing on their 7 months old baby, who had learned and changed so much during this short time. Secondly, with the winter getting surprisingly cold in Spain, the weather wasn’t good to camp in the garden anymore. So we organized a house for them to stay.
This time we didn’t go the beach. Instead we went to the forest and searched for the typical mushroom in the region, called “Rovellons” or “Niscalos”. The german word is “Edel-Reizker”. It’s kind of a sporting event here to go Niscalo-hunting on the weekends, so it was good for us that we already went Friday morning. We were able to find a good portion for all of us.
Niscalos or Rovellons – tasty mushroom in spanish woods
Of course, our final dinner included mushrooms and a lot of other tasty food. But it was not a farewell for forever.
The colour garden, the rain and the long stopovers on the way to and from Portugal connected us even more than the internet would have been able too and we will for sure meet somewhere sometime again.
Dinner with seven people – always a bit messy and loud, but very connective and community-like.
After the first big flood in October 2018 in Castellon with more than 400 liter per square meter in 24 hours we had to repair an old part of a ancient street in our valley.
The flood washed out a lot of stones and gravel. The pathway became a river. This old street is part of the old infrastructure of pathways around our village Cervera del Maestre and therefor connetcted to the Camino de Santiago and the roman “highway” Via Augusta.
As in many cases old roads are talking a lot about culture, time, societies and trades. In our case we collected a lot of iron pieces, washed out from the flood and collected in lower areas between stones.
Every of this pieces has its own history. Some of them we can identify as parts of ancient tools for gardening and agriculture. some of them came from old wood constructions in local houses.
We collect them to use them as part of our artworks and as an ingrediente of a recipe to make black ink together with pomegrans.
To rebuild the street we collected local stones of different sizes nearby. It took us 4 days of work to rebuild just the ten meter of the ancient pathway.
If you come to the color garden, follow the signpost arrow to “Via Augusta” and with a little bit of luck you will find also a piece of european history between the rocks of this ancient pathway.
dulce de membrillo – the day of the quince – we come together to exchange recipies, to explore them and to share the results of the fresh quince fruits from our color garden in Cervera del Maestre.
We meet at 19 hrs in CASAdelDRAGON, Las Parras 19, 12578 Cervera del Maestre, Spain.
Join us for a nice evening with international guests and friends and lets have dinner together. Please apply via email or phone ( +49 160 99131933 incl. whatsapp).
Having a nice evening by talking about the first 4 years of the living community FamiliaFeliz in the libary LA TEMPLANZA in in Peniscola in Castellon.
We will start with a presentation and continue with an open dialogue about the goal to create and develop a social space for personal happiness and peace, embedded in european culture and history in the beautiful region of BAIX MAESTRAT.
Our community is open for new members as well as for people joining us for specific social art projects like Aquaponics, comon gardening, bio construction, education.
La Templanza > Carrer Solet, 8, 12598 PenĂscola, CastellĂł
On the artist website www.petry.eu you could read a quot from Elon Musk: “I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.” and the reply from the spanish german artist Juan Petry: “I wanted to be involved in worlds that would change the thing.” Following his mission to figure out agagin and again new kinds of participatory social sculptures he invited friends and neighbours – with the german artist Rolf Habel – to a very special art exhibition.
Under the titlle “Copii de Ciocanesti – the kids of Ciocanesti” he mounted 14 canvas in the “room for art” in Windeck near Cologne, in our second home unit in Germany.
Every canvas was related to a real human friend in the area of Ciocanesti, a villlage 31 kilometer far from the capital Bucharest in Romania. Laura, Raluca, Irina and all the other children of the yearly summer school where described with a portrait foto, a short description and some information about their role in this summer school event.
The “special” in this exhibition was the issue, that no painting was worked out. Petry had mounted white canvas at each place.
Before the audiance entered the exhibition space, Petry talked about his experience in the summer school in the last two years and his workshops and the lovely people in Romania.
After a walk from canvas to canvas talking about the little stories related to the kids of Ciocanesti the audience started to work out all paintings. Everybody choosed 3 or 4 stories and they organised themselves in teams to paint 14 works in 4 hours.
Finally all art works where mounted again and we all enjoyed a walk through this “pictures of an exhibition”.
The smallest member of the family turned two and we celebrated with a big fiesta in the colour garden of familia feliz.
13 children age 5 months to 5 years with their parents enjoyed the time in the garden.
We started with coffee and cake, and opened really nice presents.
We had prepared a little game, where the children searched for a hidden pot with a little present hidden underneath with eyes closed. In german this game is called „Topfschlagen“.
We did a little mosaic on roof tiles, and I (Vero) was surprised that the little children (age 2) already had lots of fun and did a really great job with the ceramic pieces.
The process was really smooth. Some children stayed longer at the mosaic, some only did one piece and declaired themselve finished. Others preferred doing some gymnastics. The garden transformed into a paradise for children – without any toys.
The finished mosaic. Not perfect, of course but created with lots of little helping hands.
That was all the „programm“ we had though of in advance. And it was enough, the garden had so many spots to discover for the children. They started looking for fossils.
And found some good hiding spaces.
For dinner, Julien made a big vegetarian paella for 25+ people.
The dark came soon and we ate with candle light, it was really cozy.
The tents were already waiting for the little adventurer.
For most of them it was the first time camping.
The adults enjoyed the night outside (with lots of anti moscito candles).
The night was short, and in the morning it was quite cold.
But with the sunrise came the warmth and a full breakfast table.
Teeth brushing at the facilities – like on a real campground.
A great time for all of us and quite relaxing for such a big fiesta with children!
Thank you, FamiliaFeliz for sharing your ressources with us! The children and parents and we had a great time in your garden!
Raum fĂĽr die Kunst is our creatve art space in Germany. We enjoy a social art work with you on 30.09.2018. We start at 11 am. After 1 pm we invite you for a brunch in the garden.
This arts show is featured by lifebusteR (art collective).
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