First of let me start by saying updates on our website, Substack and Youtube channel have gotten sparse lately. The real world is taking precedence over virtual activities, both for work and leisure. We are extremely busy at building our community and have gatherings almost every evening! During summer many potential residents, friends and family come for a visit turning Penadexo into an informal hotel & campground. No shortage of good conversations, good food and lots of fun!
Our second edition of Santito Festival saw huge improvements in the facilities and quality of the event. We changed the location from the town square to the more intimate second level centered around the fire pit. Because this is where most people choose to hang out last year. To make this possible we built/restored the terrace on the intermediate level and turned it into a stage. This is the first of many terraces that we will restore or newly construct to make the most out of living on a hillside. In addition, we:
- Made a fully functional outdoor kitchen for guests near our BBQ area
- Created +/- 15 new parking spots within a short distance of our village
- Created new spots for camping and provided those with water & electricity
- Improved sound system and set-up
- Installed hot water in the guest bathroom
Thanks to the efforts of residents, volunteering visitors, and donations we received we could make these improvements. In the spirit of true community everyone contributed in his or her own way to make this an awesome party. Moreover we now have all the infrastructure in place to do this more often. Remember we don’t need to request a permit because we own our own village. So we decided to do another event! Saturday August 30, we celebrate the end of summer with psytrance/goa/drumnbass vibes.
We didn’t get more visitors than last year, and there are several reasons for that: our events are informal to avoid unwanted attention. We mostly do marketing by word of mouth and don’t stir up a whole lot of publicity. We stuck to our saint date of July 27th which fell on a Sunday. Perhaps next year will celebrate on a Saturday prior, with a smaller celebration on the day itself. We have no ambition to make this a huge event, and aim for a maximum of 200 visitors.
Overall I can’t help but feel a little disappointment by the lack of attendance from libertarian circles. Our free commune exists for a while now, so a visit could have been planned well in advance. Maybe our relatively rustic lifestyle doesn’t appeal to the crypto-crowd & tech-bro’s. I’m getting as much if not more interest from preppers and even left-leaning groups. They know that nothing good can be achieved without experiencing minor discomfort! Please comment below if you have a better theory!
Quality always beats quantity. We had a great crowd. There was no entrance fee. We could play whatever we wanted on our own sound-system. Eat/drink/smoke undisturbed. No closing time, free parking, make our own rules. And that, is the whole point.
I find “Commune” in your self-description confusing. It is a term associated in English with collectivists: hippies and communists. It is weird, cultish, unattractive. You are not sharing income there. It does not make sense.
I think normality is the best way to go. It is a village. Just call it a village. Maybe a free village. Then it is intriguing.
Hi Andrew,
The reasons for using the word commune are two-fold. On the one hand, it is good to be associated with hippie communes, it helps us to keep a low profile. On the other hand, it stands for the level of commitment that is required to live in a free society. A lot of libertarians tend to believe that if you do away with big government, utopia will magically appear. But most essential services that are provided by government, can only be replaced by a true community. Even high tech services in a free market would fall short of what we need throughout live. In libertarian tech utopia little thought is given to how to raise children, how to take car of the elderly, how to deal with broken families, poverty, psychological problems and addiction. What works best for successful people in the prime of their life does not work for the whole society. We need family and we need community. The word ‘free’ indicates that we don’t share possessions and believe in the NAP & free markets. But to make our freedom possible, we do form a unit, a commune.
I have written extensively about examples of communities that inspired the concept, for example, this article on the Amish: https://www.freecommune.org/blog/2021/10/31/what-we-can-learn-from-the-amish/