Off the grid living – join our intentional community of travellers in Spain

Voluntouring staff

7 years ago

yurta - building - home - shed - greenhouse - tent

We are a community of people living in a Mediterranean area, where we try to thrive with the abundance that Nature offers all around us.

Travellers and long term nomads welcome

We open our space to any travellers, students, young or old, nomads, changemakers, hippies, conformists or anti-conformists: we are happy to share our philosophy and lifestyle with you, whoever you are.

Our purpose is mostly educational, as we have a very minimalistic and anti-materialistic vision; we would like to educate the generations to come about the advantages of a more simple life in true contact with Nature (off-grid), eating less but better, working less but more significantly, possessing less and sharing more.

Our lifestyle

We don´t have a perfect life, we make many mistakes, and we miss many commodities. At the same time, we can enjoy the advantages of this lifestyle:

free time,
good food,
more health,
social contact,
play and adventures,
(almost) no competition between individuals,
support, psychological and physical, coming from our “modern” tribe.

We believe in personal spaces and in community spaces. We believe individuals need both of these elements (personal time/space and social time/space) in almost equal doses, in order to have a healthy lifestyle).

Work time

For this reason, we try to give our guests 8-9 hours of sleep and 8-6 hours of free time.

We ask generally 4-5 hours of community work.

We usually work together and decide what to do together, especially if the work is hard or challenging, also according to the community needs.

Social work includes:

forestry
gardening
eco-building construction
research
cooking
organizing events

To reinforce our community ideals, we often organize circle meetings when we discuss anything we want or anything we have learned and we want to share.

Decision-making system

Decisions making is not democratic but based on everyone’s consensus. This system seems to work just fine and we hope not to change it. Actually, when it comes to taking decisions we believe the scientific method it is the best tool: therefore we base our choices on observations of causes and effects in the reality of nature.

Communication

We try to defeat Ego, through constant communication and improvement proposals, and other social techniques (sometimes improvised techniques – we like to experiment a lot).

By doing this, we aim at creating a new, personal culture, traditions and folklore, that fit better with the circumstances of our environment.

Spirituality

We don´t consider ourselves spiritual people, though most of what we do is, in a certain way, spiritual. All religions and creed are accepted, though we do not practice or follow any official religions and some of us are atheists or agnostics. We also do not practice yoga or meditation but our volunteers are welcome to practice whatever spiritual activities they fancy the most, during their free time.

LGBT community: all sexual orientations and philosophies are welcome to join here and bring their own richness.

Come if you are looking for understanding, social bonding, and affection.
Don´t come if you are looking for sex (or other hedonistic activities that dumb our senses -smoking, drugs, drinking etc.).

Alcohol is allowed but moderately.

Some of us here is polyamorous, there is also a monogamous married couple with children. We respect all views.

Diet – free food offered but…

This is a thing we regret to say and might limit your freedom here: we do not accept animal killings or other violent forms of animal exploitation. Because of human impact on the environment many species of animals have already been displaced here, confined or condemned to extinction;
Hunt is forbidden, so is meat consumption.

Here we try to help animals instead and we give them space to live in safety.

Diet is strictly Vegetarian or Vegan, or even Raw – (fruitarian for who can manage it).

We don’t mind cheese making and eggs gathering if it comes from our free-range chicken. We cannot accept industrial meat and industrial dairy products.

We’ve been criticized for our vegetarian choice by some volunteers.

We see our vegetarian imposition as a “limitation of your freedom to limite other creature’s freedom and life”. It is important that volunteers and travelers accept this.

Accommodation

Depending on the weather, season, or other circumstances, accommodation can be in tents (your personal tent) yurt, wooden house, caravan, cob houses. In some of these structures, there´s no electricity but in the main house, there is modern equipment (electricities, computers, a small library, bathroom with showers).

There are wifi, books and computers that you can use for whatever purpose.

However, we ask guests to limit the use of the internet for “social networking” purposes. We believe that the only social moments are the ones spent with real people in real life, instead of the virtuality of the net.

Volunteers requirements and hosting limits

Every environment has its own capacity limits.
There´s only a certain amount of food that our place (and Nature) can provide for everyone, without interrupting a natural cycle and a natural balance. Therefore there´s a limit of people we can host.

We´ve found that even social interactions are better if we don´t exceed a certain number of people.

A good number for us is 12.

It’s good if the team of people is made of 12 individuals.

So we can host up to ten volunteers at a time (making us a tribe of maximum 20 people).

Cultural exchanges

The constant exchange and the open doors to as many people as possible ensure “fresh air” for our community, in order for it not to stagnate, in a social way of speaking.

However, we host preferably in the summer months as we prefer to have a private time in the winter (especially around Christmas times).

We are sorry to say that due to a large number of requests of volunteers we might do a pre-selection. So the more info you share about yourself, the better the possibilities to be accommodated by us.

Please notice… we cannot provide VISA nor travel costs.

We simply don’t have time to provide a passport or Visa to anyone requesting hospitality here. Nor money for transport. So, please, don’t ask. (We just requested this website to hide our contact details because we are receiving too many requests from travelers in need of paid travel costs and passports…)

Volunteer desirable profile

A good guest for us should have the following attributes:

they should like to live in Nature and get their hands dirty
They’re not afraid of animals and wildlife, bugs, or other creatures that you will inevitably encounter during your stay
like simplicity and minimalism
culture, education, and exchange
technology (intelligent use of)
a sense of humor, willingness to have a good time and fun.