The Water Court and the Meaning of Common Life

The city of Valencia was founded by a Roman legion almost two thousand years ago. The legion's name was "Valentia"From which its current name is derived. In November 2016, the city is governed by a political coalition that is foreign to Spanish party tradition, composed of new parties, traditional party sectors, and political organizations originating from social movements, which broke with the framework of traditional politics. This new coalition governs after 24 years of leadership by the People's Party, which today is once again managing the adjustment in the Spanish State."

This November marked the 80th anniversary of the transfer of the Republican Government to the city of Valencia during the harsh years of the civil war, in the face of the overwhelming advance of the Francoist armies, supported by the military force of Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany considered Spain a fundamental territory in its mission to dominate Europe. Valencia is a beautiful city with Roman and Moorish traditions, symbolizing the cultural cradle of a civilizing process marked here by the beauty of its architecture and local traditions. Moors and Romans bequeathed the best of their civilization to this part of Europe.

The city is enveloped by the Turia River, from which eight irrigation canals flow, serving hundreds of vegetable gardens and orange groves that make the region a verdant expanse of fertility, cultivated gardens, and foliage, where constant irrigation creates an enormous variety of colors in the landscape. In the center of Valencia, a fountain was built, through which the waters of the Turia River flow, passing by a statue of eight iron nymphs surrounding a reclining man, bathed in the perpetual coolness of the waters. It is the symbol of “common sense"Designed by human will for the equitable distribution of water, a method of the age-old intelligence of the community."

The "Water Court of Valencia" is the oldest existing democratic justice institution in Europe. It deals with organizing the distribution privileges enjoyed by orchards during Arab times, aiming to administer justice according to the needs of each farmer. This court dates back to the time of the Caliphate of Córdoba, of Islamic tradition, and adapted to the new times in which the Spanish Kings organized their power in the territory. In this court, the judges work without remuneration, under supervision. on-site visit by the people of the city, whose legislation recognizes not only its autonomy, but also the full validity of its decisions.

Valencia and the region are heirs to Roman and Arab civilization, as well as the modern struggles for the formation of the Spanish state. The Water Tribunal represents the most fruitful achievement of the Islamic presence, in terms of justice, in this history that spans eight centuries. Professor Elinor Osstrom, Nobel Prize winner in Economics in 2009, wrote a powerful book about this experience of valuing "common sense," through which the community guides the resolution of its conflicts. This book is titled "The government of the commons"in which this humanitarian, community-based, and profoundly socialist heritage is incorporated as a possible element of a Political Economy of Justice."

Valencia, with its memory also shaped by the Spanish Civil War, doesn't end there as a historical landmark. There stands the Hotel Metropol, the former USSR embassy during the establishment of the Republic in the Civil War, and also the residence of Mikhail Kultzhov, correspondent for Pravda, who returned to the USSR at the end of the Civil War, where he was executed by Stalin's police. There, on Calle Poeta Querol, is the place where Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos stayed, a symbolic place where they broke off an old friendship because Dos Passos incessantly searched for Professor Pepe Robles, the famous translator of the Russian general Gorev, the great defender of Madrid. Hemingway scorned this search. Pepe Robles had been "disappeared" by the KGB because he knew too much. General Gorev, upon returning to Moscow, was also executed on Stalin's orders.

As can be seen, Valencia holds the grandeur of heroism, the cowardice of paranoia, the tragedies and glories of a vast historical period, in which the generosity of the struggle for the Republic against Fascism suffered the impasses not only of Nazi-Fascist violence and Francoism, but also the bureaucratic violence of the Soviet apparatus which, while supporting the Republic, sought to extend its monopoly of state violence beyond its territory.

Valencia, however, survives with the example of the Water Tribunal as a testament to that glorious era of republican struggles. This is a body with jurisdiction over the distribution of water from the Turia River canals, which issues its final judgments, discussed and agreed upon publicly before the community, with its oral rulings and procedures being immediately implemented: water distributed to the extent that those who need it need it. It makes not only vegetable gardens and orange groves flourish, but also the “common sense"of Solidarity and Justice that can unite a community of destiny. The Water Court is not a folkloric and inoperative body merely representing tradition, but, above all, a model of justice that..."the man from the vegetable garden"It was established and respected, and it survived all the reforms."

In the city that was the last gasp of the Republic, where men and women from all regions of the world converged to defend the ideals of the Republic and Democracy, an institution survives that sheds light on the memory of all the heroes of the Civil War. And which is, at the same time, a fierce critique of bureaucracy, authoritarianism, and unbridled state violence. Hemingway, Dos Passos, Pepe Robles, and Osstrom represent its best memories, now in the hands of a new Political Front with the Mayor of Valencia Joan Ribó (of the “Compromis” Political Group), the Vice-President of the region Mónica Oltra, the President of the Valencian Parliament Enric Morera, and the President of the Valencian Generalitat Ximo Puig (from the left wing of the PSOE), who recently received the FAO honor recognizing Valencia as the “world capital of food” in 2017.

The Valencian newspaper “Levante” (December 13, 2016) announces in its main headline that “Workers who earn less than 524 Euros will receive inclusion income"In contrast to the liberal adjustments implemented worldwide, where the poor foot the bill for public debt, Valencia provides income supplementation for precarious, intermittent, part-time, and unemployed workers, the main victims of the insanities of neoliberalism, such as those originating from Constitutional Amendment 241/55."

The current political experience in Valencia has two important meanings for our time in Brazil. On the one hand, it is a new experience of a Political Front that departs from the patterns proposed by traditional parties and expresses itself, including with the support of PODEMOS in the formation of the Government, as a new way of doing politics, in which parties and movements, youth from social movements and historical figures from social and democratic struggles, converge to produce a new meaning for politics and for common life.

On the other hand, the Water Court, as a millennial institution, shows that the architecture that generated state power can be permeated by direct community participation in essential issues concerning their lives. A sense of the common good can integrate the modern state and dissolve the bureaucratic and authoritarian barriers that separate the ordinary citizen from public administration. The common good defeats privatism, cronyism, the neoliberal ideology of the strongest, and private power over the goods of nature.

Political dynamics, cultural actions, and the multiple dimensions of daily life show that human beings can take ownership of their destiny. As a starting point, it is enough for them to recognize themselves as equals, to combine Governance, Democracy, Republic, and Justice into a single totality understood as solidarity and commitment. Moreover,Compromise"s" is the name of the innovative political formation that, together with the authentic socialists, Izquierda Unida and PODEMOS, rekindled the light of Democracy and the Republic in the soul of Valencian, Spanish and universal humanity.

From the South 21