The Quijorna Trip
Today, November 18, 2025, we went to Quijorna to put up posters inviting the population to attend our nethuerting event on Sunday, November 30 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Virginia García, deputy mayor and councilor for culture of this City Council, welcomed the group under her umbrella so that we could present our initiative to the inhabitants of Quijorna. So we show up at a playful/festive event in this town.
Why Quijorna? Why did we end up in this Villa? Well, we don’t know very well.
Today Julio asked me, one of the artists in the group. Weren’t we going to settle on our own land in Valdemorillo? Well, no one knows. Because this project has a life of its own and those of us who now carry out the daily work among the group of founders of “Alimentando la sierra”, have succumbed to the strength of the project and we are letting ourselves go. The force of the current of this new age is so strong that we are only the hands of something higher that we do not understand very well.
This morning has been a discovery of so many sprouts that are being born that we have only been privileged spectators of their abundance.
For years, humanity has been under the great influence of a world of abundance that is very difficult for us to digest. Some poor in soul have thought that this abundance is only in the material and bury themselves under the treasure of gold they have accumulated. Others are drowning in the saturation of the power of access to information with the advance of technology since everything is just a click away. Chaos is served because we all feel that concept of ‘abundance’ but we do not know its meaning and we misunderstand it. Hence those confrontations, those wars, those pains and diseases. Meanwhile, in that chaos, some of us, only sometimes, can see and be aware of what is happening.
This happened this morning:
On the way to Quijorna, a significant conversation arises. Years ago, the Paraguayan artist arrived in Spain with a project to collect experiences and objects that he would take back to the other side of the pond to exhibit there. An installation under the title “The Wreckage”. That planned return never took place, but its creator is already drowning under the burden of these objects. To start a new stage of his life, he wants to lighten his backpack. Nothing exhausted with the waves to reach dry land but there is always a rip wave that takes him away from his goal. When he abandons himself to the designs of death in the rough sea, a wave arrives that leaves him gently on the beach. All those collected objects have been left behind and lightly opens his eyes to the new life that awaits him.
Almost arriving at our destination, a sign next to a second sign indicates the way to the cemetery and the clean point as if reminding us of recycling, of the time that passes, that we are in that transit between the old that does not end up leaving and the new that is already coming. We are in that transition, in that impasse, and receiving that new and even unknown thing, with confidence and joy.
How and where are we going to stick the posters we carry on us? First stop at the City Hall.
They printed the posters and have placed them on the notice boards of the activities throughout the Villa. They are not digital screens. They are corks to which the population goes to find out what is going to happen and the new news that there is.
A restaurant. Its owner Dani proudly asks us about the quality of the coffee he has just put in us. Tired of the fact that no one comes to try his roast kid that he used to prepare every weekend and now only does it if he is ordered punctually. He is going to receive us on Sunday in the break of our presentation for that coffee of the nethuerting and who knows if we will stay later to try that roast kid. Here we are told the joke of the Paraguayan a Colombian gardener who introduces himself as Fredy (as Fredy Krueger tells us). We prefer to recognize it by the one that creaks before sprouting. He is already part of the army of regeneration that invades the mountains. José Javier, who has heard us, approaches us asking for support for his goats that are going to clean the village, ensuring the prevention against forest fires and the use of their milk for cheeses. Now with his wife they run the butcher shop of Quijorna “La Dehesa de Quijorna Productos Artesanos S.L.” who, being able to retire, prefers to continue fighting for survival in the face of large supermarkets who are putting an end to agriculture and livestock farming of proximity, turning the primary sector into a mere consumer good in the stock markets. A nonsense of this Titanic that sinks due to its greed of that misunderstood abundance. He asked us for support and supports us by talking about the kindness of Tony, the Mayor of Villamantilla and president of the ADI Association (The Association for the Integral Development of the Sierra Oeste de Madrid) and who, fulfilling his design, works and facilitates the work of the ranchers and farmers in the area.
Of course, our usual visit to our corner of the Forest to become familiar with the land that will give shelter to all of us in a collective learning space where everyone has a place and contributes ideas to build a community with strength and resilience. This garden, which can be reached on foot, welcomes us with its great abundance of food that heals the body and soul. The leaves of some chard of intense greenery, immense pumpkins, fairytale radishes, and the hands, those caring hands of our agricultural ally
