☀️ The end of August often leaves an unsettling feeling. While some people face the return to their routines after a few days of rest, many others have spent these weeks working or simply seeking a breather amid the heat and daily demands. Summer is frequently presented as a promise of complete escapism—an interlude where festivals, local celebrations, and travels seem to temporarily suspend our structural challenges. Yet, when the festive momentum fades, reality brings us right back to our starting point. As the philosopher Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Perhaps the real challenge at this time of year is not grieving the end of a break, but directing our attention toward what truly endures: the daily civic fabric that sustains our lives long after the seasonal bustle quiets down.

🤲🏼 Building the commons does not follow vacation schedules, nor can it be left to market forces. Faced with the temptation of isolation or the weariness that sometimes accompanies the beginning of September, organizing and caring for the environments we inhabit becomes an essential collective necessity. It is not merely about buffering the strain of relentless productivity or institutional shortcomings, but about forging lasting bonds that make our neighborhoods, regions, and landscapes livable throughout the entire year. The three initiatives we share today stem from that very determination: projects driven by people who are not waiting for others to shape their future, but are putting their effort and creativity into creating safe spaces, defending community autonomy, and preserving the memory of a world in constant transformation. Will you join us?

Impulsem el Casal Popular El Polvorí!

🌊 In Cambrils, far beyond the postcard tourism that dominates the summer months, a grassroots neighborhood movement has been organizing locally for more than a decade. Casal Popular El Polvorí, founded in 2014 and currently supported by around seventy members, is embarking on a decisive phase: outfitting its new premises after having moved through four different locations over its ten-year history. To ensure this self-managed community hub continues to serve as an engine for dialogue, solidarity, culture, and conscious leisure alternatives, the collective needs to carry out essential renovations, including repairing entrances, flooring, electrical installations, setting up an audiovisual system, and purchasing materials for its activities.

✊🏻 Sustaining an independent grassroots space on a daily basis provides an essential bulwark against the depersonalization of our cities. At El Polvorí, interconnected struggles for housing rights, quality public services, feminism, and territorial protection coexist with a crucial community initiative: free Catalan conversation classes open to everyone. Viewing language as an inclusive tool for social cohesion makes it possible to welcome newly arrived neighbors and build active bridges of coexistence within the municipality.

👥 A project of this nature can only thrive if the community actively stands behind it. Your donation will enable the purchase of necessary materials, the technical adaptation of the space, and the financial stability required to cover rent and keep the initiative alive.

👉🏼Get involved here now

En un Lugar del Norte 2026. La edición más complicada.

🤑 When formal agreements fall through in bureaucratic offices, collective initiatives are compelled to demonstrate the true strength of their roots. After more than six years of activity since its inception in 2020, the cultural project En un Lugar del Norte suffered a major setback following the non-payment of the agreement committed by the Cervera de Pisuerga City Council for the previous edition. This shortfall created a debt that prevented the regular 2026 edition from taking place and halted much of the organizing cultural association’s work. Far from giving up, the team has turned to its community, organizing a special supporters’ gathering on September 5 in Castrejón de la Peña, featuring a concert by Delameseta and fellow artists to keep moving forward.

🗣️ This civic appeal goes beyond holding a concert; it represents a direct challenge to the precariousness of institutional dependence. Supporting En un Lugar del Norte means endorsing a funding model where the audience and small local organizations act as the true custodians of their own shared spaces for leisure and coexistence. The initiative demonstrates that the power of intergenerational gathering and shared vitality belongs to the people who live in or return to the territory, rather than to unilateral administrative decisions.

🤗 The continuation of an independent project depends on mutual commitment when challenges arise. Your financial contribution will help settle the accumulated debt, safeguard the collective’s autonomy, and make the September 5 gathering in the Palentine Mountain possible.

👉 Donate here

Tu Testigo

📸 Over seventeen years and across more than thirty journeys, photographer and documentarian Francisco Javier Fernández Bordonada (Chavi) traveled throughout Iceland, guiding fellow creators before glaciers whose ice mass has visibly receded over time. From this testimonial visual archive comes Tu Testigo, an auteur documentary short produced by Bordonada Films and conceived as an intimate letter to the land. The film weaves the director’s direct experience with the first-hand account of Almar Sigurson, a resident of the Lambastadir farm in Selfoss, who experienced both the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent wave of mass tourism. With the footage and narrative already assembled, the campaign seeks the necessary funds to replace the temporary AI-generated voiceover with a definitive human voice, as well as to complete professional sound post-production and color grading ahead of its festival run.

‼️ In an era defined by fast-paced photographic consumption of travel destinations, independent documentary cinema creates a vital space for reflection. Tu Testigo avoids moralizing sermons, offering instead an honest, autobiographical reflection on the imprint tourism leaves on fragile ecosystems and the people who inhabit them. Backing this project will allow the team to complete a rigorous on-the-ground work and safeguard a valuable audiovisual document recording the environmental and social transformations in northern Europe.

💪🏼 To ensure this testimony reaches international festivals with the depth it deserves, it needs the backing of an engaged community. Your donation will finance the professional technical finishing of the short film and secure your name in the final credits of the definitive cut.

👉 Support the campaign here

What about you? What are you interested in?

😙 At the Platoniq Foundation we are dedicated to disseminating innovative democratic initiatives that add value for citizens, as well as to promoting crowdfunding for projects with social impact through our platform Goteo.org. Join us at our events and continue promoting democratic transition and collective empowerment.

🥰 Join this transformation! Let the social and solidarity energy flow, because in a seemingly devastated world, we can still build change. Donate to our campaign and participate in the new version of Goteo.

See you in the next newsletter! 😜

That's as far as we go. We hope this newsletter has encouraged you to keep walking towards the society of all and for all that we are gradually approaching. See you next time!