Since the financial crisis began in 2008, Marinaleda has shot to fame — and so has its maverick mayor Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, who earned the nickname,”The Spanish Robin Hood,” after organizing and carrying out a series of supermarket raids in a direct action protest last August. Basic groceries such as oil, rice and beans were loaded into carts, wheeled from the store and taken to a local food bank to help the poor, as helpless cashiers looked on, some crying.

In an interview after the event, Gordillo, the democratically elected mayor since 1979, said it was not theft, but a non-violent act of disobedience.

“There are many families who can’t afford to eat,” he argued. “In the 21st century this is an absolute disgrace. Food is a right, not something with which you speculate.”

Gordillo, who has political immunity from prosecution, is angry that supermarkets throw food away while millions go hungry, and also blames big supermarkets for the death of the small-scale farmer: “A product is sold to the consumer for 704 percent more than what the farmer is paid for it,” he points out.

Not your average-looking politician, Gordillo sports a bushy grey beard reminiscent of Fidel Castro and is rarely seen without a Palestinian scarf draped over his shoulders. A reluctant celebrity, in person he seems shrunken, skinnier and wearier than he did during last summer’s supermarket invasions.

The Robin Hood raids were popular with many in Andalusia, a region where crippling austerity measures and huge job losses have hit the hardest.

In this province alone there are 690,000 empty properties due to bank foreclosures. But not in Marinaleda, because Gordillo has a solution: anyone who wants to build their own house can do so for free. Materials and qualified workmen are provided by the town hall, and the generous allowance of 192 square meters means the homes are spacious. Families then pay just 15 euros ($19) per month for the rest of their lives, with the agreement that the house cannot be sold for private gain.

“I think a home should be a right, not a business,” explains Gordillo, who received 73 percent of the votes in the last campaign and has beaten his opponents every four years for nine consecutive elections.

“This crisis started with the banks and real estate and we have to break that. Marinaleda has provided solutions to specific problems outside of capitalism, with a different economic model.”

In Andalusia, unemployment now stands at 37 percent (a staggering 55 percent for young people). But Marinaleda, population 2700, has virtually full employment through the town’s farming cooperative, where laborers earn equal wages of 1200 euros ($1600) per month. Here, in a region where 1 in 3 people are unemployed, this achievement cannot be understated.

Marinaleda’s situation is unique. While a framed portrait of Che Guevara hangs in Gordillo’s office, there is no communist party in Spanish politics. The mayor calls himself a libertarian and has implemented his ideals as a representative of the Izquierda Unida (United Left) party, holding a seat in the regional government. Officially, the town identifies as a social-democratic “free town” built on cooperative principles.

Streets and squares are named after Latin American revolutionaries, and a large portrait of Jacque Fresco, the futurist and visionary of the Venus Project, adorns the town hall. Several times a year people gather to do voluntary work in the community. These “Red Sundays” are spent planting trees, making repairs or farming.

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/25/we_dont_want_police_here_land_of_the_real_life_robin_hood/