Conclusions from the EU Rural Coworking Forum 2024 & next steps – Erasmus + CoLab Europe

Context and goals

Within the framework of the European Erasmus+ CoLab Europe project about the future of rural coworking in Europe, the third international training activity took place at Ribering Coworking in Aranda de Duero (Spain), on November 27-28 2024, under the form of the 1st European Rural Coworking Forum. It was organized by the project’s local partner –NBSCLIMATE-, with support from the other two partners: the Italian association Trevessu (leader) and the Portuguese association MARCA. All three entities manage rural coworking spaces in their respective countries.

The Forum highlighted rural coworking spaces as important drivers of sustainable rural development, contributing to attracting and retaining talent in the rural areas and creating communities of practice made up of a diversity of professionals who promote innovative economic activities aligned with the just ecological transition. In other words, it aimed to promote rural repopulation via alternative development models centered on shared work-spaces («coworking») where, in addition to a place, ideas, dreams and projects are shared.

To this end, for two full days, sessions were held around how rural coworking spaces can collaborate with key local public and private stakeholders, namely: civil society (children and families, youth, seniors, NGOs), companies (SMEs, medium and large corporations, business associations), academia (university, educational centers), etc. Impactful cases were presented both by the host coworking itself -Ribering-, the other two partnering coworkings (Aurora Coworking led by Trevessu and Marca Cowork led by Marca), as well as other participating entities in the sector from all over Spain and Europe. In practice, the Forum significantly helped Ribering Coworking establish new and reinforce existing partnerships in the Ribera del Duero region of Spain, as well as inspire Trevessu and Marca to follow suit with their own regions, adapting ideas to their own local contexts. 

Given its European nature, the Forum’s official language was English, and participation (in person at Ribering Coworking or online) was open to rural coworking managers from all over Spain and Europe, as well as representatives of the event partners, which provided support, contents and outreach, including Automattic, Aranda de Duero’s City Council, ADRI Ribera del Duero Burgalesa (the region’s Local Action Group), the University of Burgos’ Green Office, ANCYCO (the national Network of Rural Coworking & Coliving Spaces), COWOCYL (the Rural Coworking Network in the Castilla y León region), and Demanda Coworking (a network of rural coworking spaces in the nearby Sierra de la Demanda region in Burgos). Besides, the EU Climate Pact ambassadors network supported the event, promoting it over its EU-wide channels, and considering it as a Pact’s Satellite Event. 

Program and contents

All sessions were structured as follows: first, there was a brief introduction to the session’s specific topic by Ribering, then impactful initiatives around the topic were presented by all three Colab Europe’s partners (Ribering, Trevessu & Marca), next participants from other coworking spaces in attendance shared their own impactful projects, and lastly a group discussion was facilitated in order to draw best practices in terms of engagement, impact and business models. Zooming in, these were the contents shared and the people and organizations that took part:

Day 1 – Wednesday, November 27, 2024

(9:30-11:00) Welcome, introduction and context:

To start up with, Jesus Iglesias, Cristina Ferrer and Ana Bartolome from Ribering (NBSCLIMATE) presented the Erasmus+ CoLab Europe Project to the audience, detailing its objectives and activities, and summarizing the two international trainings that had already taken place in Portugal in July and Italy in October, before getting into the specifics of the Rural Coworking Forum itself. Emphasis was placed on the Forum’s primary goals: engaging local communities around the rural coworking spaces, and unleashing collaborative economies at their heart. The event partners were introduced, with many of them in attendance on Day 1, and then the full schedule was laid out. 

Next up, the Ribering Team told the story of how the coworking space had emerged in December 2022 and evolved over the course of almost two years, as well as its relation with its parent company -NBSCLIMATE-, a Spanish social business promoting Nature-based Solutions for climate resilience, leveraging Ribering Coworking as a Nature-based Economy hub and living lab.

Afterwards, we co-created a common definition of “rural” in terms of population, economic opportunities, public services & infrastructure, and quality of life; and discussed whether our own towns fit that description: Aranda de Duero (33,626 inhabitants), Iglesias (26,784 inhabitants), and Montemor-o-Novo (15,808 inhabitants). This set the tone for a vital conversation around the concept and phenomenon of “rural coworking” in contrast to the more famous urban coworking.  Speaking about the Spanish case, research shows a clear divide between larger urban coworking spaces, usually located in big cities (Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Malaga…), dominated by a few industry players seeking to maximize profit by owning many places and focusing mostly on corporate clients renting private areas rather than individual users. The difference in selling prices is also notable, while the price for a single desk ranges from 250 to 450 €/month in large urban coworking spaces, in smaller rural ones it is usually under 150, with the average being 195 €/month in Spain. 

A broader comparison between urban and rural coworking in Spain was presented structured around:

• Concept: while the modern coworking movement has actually an urban origin as a way to share an office without requiring high initial investments and being able to mutualize costs, and with a strong focus on creating real value for users/members by maximizing opportunities for building relationships and fostering collaboration, lately it has gotten distorted as it has been absorbed by the real estate capitalist market to a large extent. On the other hand, rural coworking is a newer phenomenon, with a more diverse nature expressed in a myriad of different contexts and local peculiarities, and yet it has remained more faithful to the original mission of fostering the collaborative economy.   
• Business model: urban coworking spaces are quite large, with 69% of the available m2 belonging to 259 places (16%) bigger than 1,000 m2; whereas rural ones are usually smaller than 200 m2, with 408 places (48%) accounting for only 7% of the total space available. Urban spaces have a high demand, achieving around 80-90% of occupancy rate, with 90% dedicated to corporate offices and only 10% for flexible coworking areas, implying the core business is clearly premium services for corporates. Also, they rely heavily on automation for efficiency and reduction of staff costs. By comparison, rural spaces have substantially lower occupancy rates (potentially around 20-50%, from our own data sample), with high seasonality and prevalence of part-time rental schemes (only a few days per week as opposed to everyday). In this case, the two main user types are freelancers/SME owners and IT professionals. As a result of both the lower demand and lower cost living in rural areas, prices are more competitive, which generates much less direct revenue, forcing ownership of the place, and/or significant reliance on public funding, and most times also diversification, once again turning rural coworking into a much wider offer: training, coliving, leisure, local economy fair, etc.  
• Value proposition: all of the above is captured into two very different value propositions: on the one side, urban coworking spaces are framed as the “place to be” in the city, with plenty of diversity, dynamism, quality contents, and engaging activities for entrepreneurs and freelancers; as well as open innovation and cool branding for corporates, resulting from the interaction with the entrepreneurial layers (and it’s indeed layers as they are usually separated on different floors). On the other side, rural coworking is all about building and nurturing community by creating an intimate, personal, family-like atmosphere, with socialization, mutual-care and work-life balance as its foundational pillars. Equally, this “smallness” makes it easier to forge synergies among members, and co-create projects together. Naturally, the very mission of these places (fostering a collaborative economy locally) intersects with the wider community’s mission around sustainable rural development. In other words, they are places where things happen.

The reality of rural coworking nowadays presents both challenges and opportunities, some place-specific but many general:

Challenges

Opportunities

Cultural barriers: – Seeking integration into the larger local community, navigating local dynamics and expectations is not easy.  – A collaborative mindset is sometimes missing due to various powerful forces such as globalization, urbanization and rural depopulation. Economic & financial barriers: -Ownership of the place is usually a must for viability’s sake. – The initial investment required is significant, and most times public aid is either nonexistent or inadequate, resulting in limited infrastructure and thus possibilities to offer multiple services and activities simultaneously: coworking area, meeting rooms, training, events, etc.  – The direct revenue generated is low/modest, while the workload demanded is moderate/high, which results in short-term risk and uncertain long-term viability.

Cultural trends: – The Great City Escape from pollution, noise, traffic, gentrification, touristification, heat (climate change), already underway slowly but surely. – The growing Neo-ruralism movement blending the best of the two worlds (urban dynamism and rural slow lifestyle) finds ideal landing communities in rural coworking spaces. – Community building: community being vital to resilience and happiness, rural coworking spaces are fertile ground to foster local connections and a real collaborative economy from, for and by the people.  Economic diversification: – New markets: rural areas often encompass new, untapped markets and niches, with specific needs and interests to be catered to. – Rural tourism and ecotourism as added-value services, in collaboration with local tour guides and tourism-related companies. – Coliving to complement coworking for digital nomads. Similarly, cohousing for regular coworkers. – Training & education: rural repopulation starts by training the new generation of professionals in the skills, expertises and new jobs demanded by the just & ecological transition of the economy underway. To this end, rural coworking spaces can offer specialized hands-on courses together with universities and VET centers. – Joint, transformative projects: a synergistic community can produce collaborative projects, multiplying impact and revenue.

In order to address these challenges and seize the opportunities, a series of strategies for success are recommended:

• Tailoring offerings to local needs and preferences
• Building strong partnerships with key local stakeholders such as small business associations, municipalities, educational centers, the rural tourism sector, etc.  
• Leveraging technology to overcome geographic limitations (e.g. to have prominent speakers participate in local events via videoconference), and render operations more cost-effective (e.g. online marketplaces, Enterprise Resource Planning -ERP- software, etc.), yet without ever losing the human touch at the center of the community. 

Speaking about community, a vibrant coworking space is made of each and all of these three ingredients: an inspiring physical space, a diverse professional community and a skilled community builder, who commits to: 

• Identifying and attracting potential new members.
• Getting members to know each other, explore synergies, share expertise, resources and contacts, and build trust.
• Cultivate a welcoming, inclusive, and friendly environment.
• Maximize engagement and participation, seeking to involve members in caring for the community, feeding it with quality contents, and ultimately enlarging it. Fun and engaging networking activities are a crucial part of it. 

Some aspects to consider at this point:

• The community does not emerge, grow or interact by itself, it needs a community builder, whose personal skills and qualities make a difference.
• Facilitation is aimed at helping members reach common objectives, provide mutual benefits, and create joint added value. Also, it sets the foundations for the kind of community that is wanted and not wanted.
• Early adopters are critical allies and recruiters, they’re the seed of the nascent community.
• Especially in rural areas, the coworking project has to participate in other local communities so as to create close connections, and join forces for the greater good of the region.

During the open debate that ensued, Javier Ruiz, on behalf of Demanda Coworking, COWOCYL, and ANCYCO, made important contributions, underscoring the community aspect of rural coworking projects and their roots in and connections with the wider local community. Also, he underlined the fact that getting accepted and integrated into the local community takes substantial time, but that is precisely what the rural mindset is about: the slow life. 

(11:30-13:00) Session 1 – Rural Coworking and Local Governments

After the coffee break, we embarked on to the first working session where we explored partnerships between rural coworking spaces and local governments both on the municipal and regional (county) level. In theory, the exchange of value can revolve around the following give & get:

	Local government	Rural coworking
Get	– Fresh ideas to improve the town/region. – Knowledge and expertise from expert professionals. – Citizen participation.	– Larger reach and promotion of its activities. – Institutional support that builds credibility. – Resources to operationalize and scale up collaborative projects.
Give	– Promotion. – Institutional support.Resources.	-A place where things happen. – Community facilitation. – Expert knowledge & expertise. – Contacts & translocal networks.

On behalf of the Aranda de Duero City Council, Guillermo López -Councilor of Innovation & Finance- and José Antonio Fuertes -Councilor of Culture & Education-, spoke about how Aranda could become a talent hub for remote workers thanks to its strategic location (1h45 drive from Madrid and 2h30 from Bilbao via the A1 highway, and 1h10 from Valladolid and Soria via the A11 highway under construction), the fact that it is the capital of the world-class wine-producing region of Ribera del Duero, which also has significant industrial activity (third largest industrial park of Castilla y León), as well as the multiple advantages resulting from its medium size, namely the availability of all essential public services and infrastructure (although important lacks and challenges remain as we shall see later on), and high quality of life overall. Then, they referred to the 20230 Urban Agenda, and the potential for collaboration with Ribering both in terms of fomenting citizen participation and providing technical assistance to advance urban regeneration, in particular in the realms of sustainable mobility, renaturing/regreening and economic localization.

Along these lines, the Ribering team shared its vision for Aranda and the Ribera del Duero region, with coworking and the Nature-Based Economy as two potent levers for rural repopulation. Two specific project proposals for the EU Horizon Europe funding program that materialize this view, and where there is an ongoing collaboration with the City Council, are:

• New European Bauhaus: co-design and co-development of two public places, engaging all key stakeholders to leverage Nature-based Solutions for the revitalization of vulnerable neighborhoods by building climate resilience and social equity, as well as promoting the aesthetic & artistic components: an abandoned greenhouse in the Tenerías district, and an unused kennel in the industrial park near a high-school. The goal being to turn these places into citizen-led centers for both urban gardening and socio-cultural activities, all while serving as climate shelters.
• Nature-based Solutions for Smart, Sustainable & Inclusive Growth of Rural Areas: it aims to enhance the climate resilience, biodiversity, and local economy (including wine ecotourism) of the rural vineyard agrosystems of the Ribera del Duero region in Spain, with replicators in El Hierro, Canary Islands. 

Furthermore, the flagship partnership between the City Council and Ribering takes shape as Aranda Ambassadors, a network of volunteers who collectively contribute to improving Aranda, working in groups around the various existing challenges of the city: mobility, local economy, biodiversity & climate resilience, cultural diversity, education, health, etc. Besides, it is one of the 50 projects selected by the European Commission within the Communities for Climate initiative.

Moving on to the regional scope of Ribera del Duero, the Local Action Group –ADRI Ribera-, represented by its Managing Director Héctor Ibáñez, presented its rural development programs underpinned by the EU funding program LEADER, as well as its different activities and services to foster rural entrepreneurship and quality employment. Once again, the qualities and benefits of the rural lifestyle in general, and of the Ribera del Duero region in particular, were emphasized. 

Together with ADRI Ribera and an array of other strategic partners like CARTIF Foundation, Rewilding Spain, University of Burgos, City Council of Aranda de Duero, SODEBUR (Provincial Government of Burgos), Regulatory Council of the Ribera del Duero DO, ASEBOR / ASEMAR (Association of Wineries), and several individual wineries, we’re co-designing a comprehensive plan to rewild the Ribera del Duero region, regenerating its various ecological & cultural landscapes (vineyards, watersheds, mountains, etc.) and their ecosystem services, in order to enhance biodiversity, and thus build climate & ecological resilience and social equity. 

As a multilateral partnership, Ribering is working with Equiparte, Aranda’s City Council and ADRI Ribera, to put together the “Equiparte School – Ribera del Duero”, an 8-month hybrid training program taking place in Ribering for local governments (public technicians and politicians alike) and changemakers in the Ribera del Duero to learn and apply the personal and interpersonal development skills needed to mainstream rural sustainable development, from the individual scope, to the team’s, organization’s, and networks’.  

(2:30-4:00 pm) Session 2 – Rural coworking and large companies

After a delicious and enjoyable lunch break seasoned with Ribera wine, the time came to discuss partnership between rural coworking spaces and large businesses in their surroundings. To spark the conversation, Ribering shared the following give & get framework:  

	Large businesses	Rural coworking
Get	– Cool, rural workplaces for their remote workers and young recruits. – Rural hubs of talent and fresh ideas. – Collaboration with agile entrepreneurs and startups to foster open innovation to address their corporate challenges. – Regenerative projects, either as Corporate Social Responsibility -CSR- or core business.	-Remote rural workers, and young professionals. – Reach and visibility via the large businesses’ channels. – Access to international networks of professionals and organizations. – High-level expertise, especially in areas such as IT, finance, business management, event planning or communication/marketing. – Monetary resources via partnership agreements and sponsorship packages.
Give	– Remote workers. – Reach and visibility. – International network. – High-level expertise.Monetary resources.	– Cool, rural workplaces.Rural hubs of talent & fresh ideas. – Community & community builder. – An ecosystem of entrepreneurs and startups, plus expert facilitation, to unleash open innovation. – Local regenerative projects to invest in.

As a concrete example, Ribering laid out its Corporate Partnerships’ service package, centered around three main elements of value creation for corporations in the area or with an interest/connection with it:

1. Attracting talent to rural areas, in particular for their own staff.
2. Open innovation to address their corporate regeneration challenges tapping into Ribering Community’s collective intelligence.
3. Rewilding of the Ribera del Duero, through the NatuRibera Plan, to preserve and improve the region’s ecosystem services they and all benefit from (water, food, stable climate, human health, etc.)

Two types of partnerships are offered: 

• Event Partners, who participate as speakers and challenge owners in Ribering’s cornerstone yearly events: the Rural Coworking Forum and the Rural Climate Forum (“DEEP Conference” in 2025) boosting climate action in rural areas through Nature-based Solutions.
• Strategic Partners, who in addition to speaking in the events mentioned, have 2 open innovation sessions or 1 Hackathon at their disposal, can make use of Ribering’s premises for coworking, their own events, training, or team building activities, and take part in the design, evaluation & continuous improvement of the NatuRibera Plan.

Next up, Raúl Antón, People Analytics Lead at Automattic (the global company behind WordPress, Woocommerce, WordPress.com, etc.) and a coworker at Ribering, shared his organization’s mission to democratize the Internet and vision on the future of work. Automattic employs 1,728 people speaking 117 languages, and located in more than 90 countries, totally embodying the distributed work philosophy, where there is no center where decisions are taken and a periphery where “others” work (i.e. remote work). Among their best practices putting this concept into practice, they engage in horizontal, open, transparent and asynchronous communication. In our current mainstream economic system, although talent exists around the world, opportunities don’t, they’re concentrated in big cities, particularly in the Global North when it comes to highly-qualified jobs in IT. Yet, innovation requires diversity, meaning the participation of people from all walks of life, and especially underrepresented groups like women, minorities or rural inhabitants. 

Pioneering companies like Automattic believe jobs should go where people -talent- want to live and not the other way around, and that’s why they actively support those employees of theirs like Raul that chose to live in their homeland, work from a rural coworking space like Ribering, and leverage it to make things happen. In the words of Karen Arnold, Automattic’s Global Vice-President of Talent,  “Rural coworking spaces play a pivotal role in providing infrastructure, social & health aspects to remote workers.” Thus, the combination of infrastructure, socialization, visibility and mobility sets the foundations for a vibrant community generating impact locally. 

After such a deep dive, we relaxed with a short but recharging yoga session with our in-house teacher: Ana Rodríguez from Villalma Yoga. 

(4:30-6:00 PM) Session 3 – Rural coworking and small businesses

To conclude Day 1, we discussed the critical linkage between rural coworking spaces and local small businesses and their associations/networks. The give & get looks as follows in this case:

	Small businesses	Rural coworking
Get	– A place to start & grow. – Quality networking.  – Incubation programs to develop their businesses. – Peer-to-peer mentoring. – Collaboration opportunities to share expertise, contacts, ideas, and eventually co-develop joint projects. – A community to be a part of, socialize, build relationships, provide mutual care, and enjoy a shared humanity.	– Dynamic, proactive coworkers. – Community.Quality contents. – Specific expertise. – Feedback and ideas to improve the services and overall experience offered. – Joint projects to co-implement at the heart of the community. – Friends to share a bit of the way together.
Give	– Specific expertise. – Contacts. – Feedback & ideas for improvement. – Trust & care. – Resources.	– An inspiring space where things happen, with the right facilities and equipment. – Community building facilitation. – Business incubation programs. – Contacts and networks. – Trust & care.

Ribering broke the ice describing its collaboration with JEARCO -the Ribera del Duero’s Young Entrepreneurs Association- it belongs to, as the host venue and facilitator of several of its regular networking events known as ‘Jearworkings’. JEARCO’s work of supporting young entrepreneurs starting up through specialized training and peer-to-peer incubation is as remarkable as is much needed. We at Ribering complement that effort providing discounted coworking services to their members, mentoring by our fellow coworkers, and collective intelligence through facilitated mastermind sessions.

Also, in an attempt to mix international talent with local one to foment innovative synergies, Ribering participated in 2023 in The Break program, an EU-funded initiative bringing 1,000+ female entrepreneurs from all over Europe to Spain, where they were hosted by 27 local organizations, including many rural coworking spaces like Ribering, where we had 2 cohorts of 15 entrepreneurs staying for a 3-week period each. We provided them with expert mentoring from local experienced business managers (including many of our coworkers), created the networking conditions to nurture collaboration with local SMEs, as well as for the most-appreciated peer-to-peer mentoring and support. Moreover, as a way for them to generate added value for the local community in return, their outsider perspective was harnessed to shape innovative solutions to local challenges in the realms of urban mobility, urban renaturing (or Nature-based Solutions), and the economic localization, through a series of cocreation sessions with the City Council, represented by the Mayor himself and several councilors. The process resulted, among other things, in the birth of a transformative initiative in progress as we speak: “Aranda Ambassadors”, a network of volunteers coming together to take collective action to improve the city, with the support of the City Council and Ribering. 

A year later, in 2024, Ribering took part in a spin-off of The Break –The Break España-, this time mentoring 10 Spanish female entrepreneurs using a regenerative approach based on The Regenerative Business Model Canvas -or ReCanvas-, co-developed by Ribering and Gloria González. The entrepreneurs then traveled to two coworking spaces in other parts of Europe for an international incubation experience, and ended pitching their projects at a DemoDay online facilitated by Ribering as well.       

The second half of the session was dedicated to listening to and interacting with two of our most international coworkers and entrepreneurs themselves: 

• Maria Pascual, co-founder of Legal Atlas, a global company pioneering legal intelligence for good. As a coworker Maria embodies the very definition of a digital nomad turned resident coworker, somebody that has traveled and lived all around the world, and is now having a global impact through her company managed from a small coworking space -Ribering- in the region where she spent her childhood’s summers. 
• Noa Simon, Scientific Director of BeeLife Europe, a non-profit advocating at EU level for bees and pollinators for the sake of food security, biodiversity, ecosystem and human health, among other cobenefits. Besides, as a native of Aranda herself, Noa has just returned home after years abroad, quite like Jesus from Ribering, to apply the best practices she has learned in a local agroecology project on her family’s farmland.

Plenty of human stories behind every little project and every world-changing collaboration. After all, that’s what we all are and crave for: a little bit of shared humanity. And so came the official dinner to feed and savor those nascent bonds, to enjoy ourselves along the way. 

Day 2 – Thursday, November 28, 2024

(9:30-11:00) Session 4 – Rural Coworking and Educational Centers

Day 2 started in great fashion: quite like Aurora Coworking’s strategic vision to promote hands-on professional training through its Aurora Academy initiative, at Ribering we are following the same direction, convinced as we are that quality education is quintessential in rural areas to both retain and attract talent, to meet the demand of local companies as well as to open up opportunities for innovation new businesses and jobs. To materialize this vision, rural coworking can develop their own academies in collaboration with expert professionals sharing their expertise, and partner with existing educational institutions for a wider reach. For the latter, the give & get may look as follows:

	Educational centers	Rural coworking
Get	– Are able to reach a wider & more diverse audience, particularly in rural areas. – Get practitioners and expert professionals to deliver hands-on training. – Add the social innovation & entrepreneurship perspective to their portfolio.	– State of the art academic knowledge, and top-quality educational content. – Institutional visibility and support. – Access to academic & research networks. – Resources: human & monetary.
Give	– Outreach. – Knowledge. – Qualified teachers & researchers. – Institutional support. – Resources.	– A cool space where things happen, attracting a new breed of students. – The art of hosting.Promotion among the local community. – A hands-on training approach by practitioners and expert professionals. – Social innovation & entrepreneurship perspective.

Inspired by Aurora, Ribering we’ve got big plans in this realm as well. Plans that are already materializing thanks to some strategic partnerships:

Together with our good friend and long-time collaborator -Gema Gómez, co-founder of Slow Fashion Next-, we are putting together a Regenerative Fashion Academy, the first-of-its-kind in Spain, and perhaps even Europe. Gema presented the idea in her trademark style: with loads of passion and clarity of thought. It basically touches on the sector’s entire value chain: from low-carbon, biodiversity-restoring production of biomaterials, to local processing, and selling by small & fair brands and retailers. 

The academy will represent the first step towards a transformative Regenerative Rural Business School focused on the Nature-based Economy, especially three sectors of particular relevance for rural areas like Ribera del Duero: regenerative viticulture & winemaking, regenerative textile & fashion, and the just & ecological energy transition. Moreover, taking it to the next level -EU-, an idea hovers over the horizon to co-develop with the other CoLab partners an International Rural Business School, with students from all three small towns (Aranda de Duero in Spain, Iglesias in Italy, and Montemor-o-Novo in Portugal) spending one trimester away at each of the other locations to learn complementary skills and sector of the rural EU economy. The time has come to make rural cool and trendy again, so that young people realize all its potential and rekindle its spark. After all, nothing beats ancestral traditions, outstanding natural wonders, and an incomparable quality of life.    

Still, education being a life-long experience, critical during the childhood’s formative years, Ribering Academy is addressing children in Primary and Secondary school via a panoply of services, including:

• English with Reilly: the English academy for kids & adults alike run by Reilly Bloomer, a friendly american young guy, who is slowly but surely becoming a local legend, both by its endeavor to make a whole new generation of “arandin@s” speak good English, as well as his exploits as top-noth runner, collecting prizes all across the Ribera del Duero and beyond. Reilly himself presented the academy with his characteristic contagious friendly mood.

• The science & technology workshops for kids that we host monthly, thanks to a strategic partnership with the University of Burgos, which brings all the materials and skilled teachers. 

The University of Burgos is indeed expanding its horizons beyond the capital city to cover most of the province’s rural territories. Besides science & tech, the University has an extremely active Green Office, which organizes all kinds of outreach activities on environmental matters, from classic talks and panels to field visits. Within this context, all our public events around these lines are promoted through the University’s channels, and the other way around. Although a last-minute hindrance preventing him from joining us on the day, Luis Marcos Naveira, the Office’s Director, has himself participated in some of our flagship events, such as the Rural Climate Forum 2024, the TEDxParqueDeLaIsla, and the inaugural meeting of stakeholders kickstarting the co-creation of Ribera del Duero’s Comprehensive Rewilding Plan. 

Furthermore, within the Horizon Europe ESIRA project they lead on social innovation in rural areas, we’ve been hired by the University to develop training materials on the “Just Green Transition in Rural Areas”, touching on a variety of topics:

• Clean Water, Living Soil, Waste Reduction and Circularizing Byproducts.
• Clean Energy, Climate Mitigation and Adaptation.
• Restoration of Ecosystems and Biodiversity.
• Organic Agriculture, Regenerative Livestock Farming and Sustainable Forest Management.
• Methodologies and Sustainability Indicators in the Rural Green Transition.

(11:30-13:00) Session 5 – Rural Coworking and Civil Society

Last but not least, after the coffee break, we delved deep into, probably, the most challenging yet most transformative, stakeholder of rural coworking spaces: civil society. If such spaces are to contribute meaningfully to revitalizing depressed or depopulating rural areas, they certainly need to engage civil society, raise awareness on the benefits of economic localization, and the Nature-based Economy, and ultimately bring together a group of changemakers that join forces to reach out and involve a critical mass of the local population (the famous 3.5%) in unleashing change. 

This is precisely the goal of Aranda Ambassadors, the initiative Ribering co-promotes with Aranda’s City Council within the EU Communities for Climate initiative: attract and organize a “legion” of volunteers willing to collaborate to improve the city, and thus the wellbeing of all its dwellers. In particular, we discussed “Aranda Feeds”, the working group fomenting a healthier, more local and ecological food system, by building a Community-Supported Agriculture scheme “Hueling the Alimenta”, in partnership with small local farmers like Eva and Víctor, from Empuje Rural and Gromecon respectively.

Raising awareness and unleashing climate action in rural areas is precisely what the Rural Climate Forum (a satellite event of the EU Climate Pact) is all about. An annual gathering organized by NBSCLIMATE and hosted at Ribering bringing to Aranda the best and brightest minds in the climate justice movement across Spain, and even from all over Europe in this last edition, which was merged with the DEEP Conference 2025. It aims to build climate resilience and enhance biodiversity, all while creating inclusive socio-economic opportunities in rural areas. It focuses on Nature-based Solutions such as regenerative agriculture, or viticulture in our Ribera del Duero region, or ecosystem restoration, from a Nature-based Economy and Entrepreneurship angle.

To get there though, the first step is to renew and strengthen the self-esteem so badly battered in rural areas. No better way to do so than showcasing the enormously talented people that either inhabit these lands (never left or chose to come and live here), or migrated to big cities (especially nearby Madrid), but still maintain strong bonds with their homeland and given the right conditions (e.g. a welcoming community in a vibrant coworking space) and opportunities might as well come back. To this end, coinciding with Ribering’s annual anniversary on December 26th, we host RiberTalent, a celebration of our talent, diversity and culture in Ribera del Duero, just in time for those who come home for Christmas, in case they may be tempted to stay… The first edition, kickstarting Ribering in 2022, took the form of a massive TEDx event: TEDxParqueDeLaIsla.

From that inception moment in December 2022, Ribering has been accommodating a myriad of open events for everyone to enjoy, participate in, and even co-organize:

• Talks and panels on sustainable mobility, renewable energy, or rewilding.
• Climate and biodiversity walks around the city and its surroundings to see firsthand the impacts, causes and local solutions to the climate & ecological crises.
• The Week, a three-episode documentary to mobilize climate action from the ground up.
• Regular cineforums playing and discussing films or documentaries with a message.
• Culture-related lectures and presentations to rediscover our history and traditions, and give birth to new works of art like poetry books.    
• And of course more leisure, networking and wellbeing oriented activities like yoga classes, theater and flashmob rehearsals (in preparation for a surprise street performance), or our trademark “Picnic de Traje”, a collaborative and delicious meal to get to know the community.  

Looking ahead, the next stage in the expansion and development of the Ribering project concerns a cohousing initiative in the plot of land right in the coworking space’s backyard: “Naturae Ribera Cohousing”, which was presented to the forum’s audience by its co-founder Javier Herrero from HC Technologies, a world-class engineering & electronics company based just a few hundred meters from Ribering. Javier is a highschool mate of Jesus, part of that cohort of talented, trained and traveled professionals returning home to show it can be done and pave the way for the next generation to follow suit. Javier has collaborated with Ribering since day 0 when he delivered a masterful TEDx talk on water management in the face of the climate crisis. Over the years, besides the cohousing project, he has been involved mostly as a business mentor, tutoring upcoming entrepreneurs from Ribering’s community, including female entrepreneurs from across Europe via The Break.    

The idea behind Naturae Ribera Cohousing emerged in Malaga in 2021 where Jesus (living there at the time) met a member of one of the most iconic cohousing projects in Spain: Entrepatios. The concept left a lasting mark on Jesus, and eventually, two years later, in March 2023, he organized a panel discussion on the topic at Ribering with two representatives from Entrepatios: one a resident member, and an architect from the studio that designed it -sAtt Distrito Natural. Javier attended that event, the idea grew in him and soon after they joined forces to make it happen. 

Basically, Naturae Ribera Cohousing is a housing solution for those who want to live in a collaborative community with the right balance between private and collective life; sharing a healthy, efficient (as close to net-zero energy consumption as possible) and ecological building with privately-owned apartments but also a series of community-owned premises aimed at encouraging social interaction and bonding, such as a library, gym, playground, TV room, a garden/forest or multipurpose spaces, whatever the community chooses to have. Legally speaking behind the project there is a housing cooperative that commissions the construction of the building, thus avoiding the often-speculative intermediaries, and rendering the housing solution more affordable consequently. The project is now accelerating fast, with construction set to start early in 2026.     

To conclude the Forum’s sessions, we were blessed by the presence of Jorge Núñez, the President of  the Citizen Platform for a Direct Railway Madrid – Aranda – Burgos. Jorge discovered a harsh reality to our European fellows, which they could already sense given the difficulties encountered to reach Aranda by public transport: the fact that Aranda was stripped off its railway line to Madrid in 2011, for nonsense political reasons using as an excuse that a train tamper had gotten stuck in a tunnel. As Jorge clearly put it, without this vital railway line joining on a straight line (the most effective route hence) Aranda with Madrid (South) and Burgos (North), all the way to Bilbao’s international port and the rest of Europe through France, the entire industrial park of Aranda (the third largest in the whole Castilla y León region) is at risk and with it most of the local population. 

Ribering, we strongly support this Platform advocating for this railway line to be reopened, as well as for a country-wide political strategy that promotes and allocates the necessary resources to restore the rural train to its former glory and more, being a key lever for rural repopulation. At a time when digitalization enables the future of work to be distributed, a reliable and efficient rural railway can certainly play a substantial role in attracting talent back to rural or semi-rural areas like Aranda and Ribera del Duero, so that professionals can reside in small-to-mid sized towns with high quality of life and much lower housing prices and cost of living in general than crowded big cities like Madrid, all while being able to regularly commute to their company’s headquarters (usually in big cities) or reach the airport for international travel. Aranda is the textbook location for all this: a mere 1h45 from Madrid and 1h30 from its airport. Thousands of people from Aranda and Ribera del Duero study, work and live in Madrid, but given an adequate train connection, and a cool coworking space with a dynamic community of professionals, could and would telework from Aranda. This is why Ribering has and will continue to collaborate with the Platform, offering its facilities to host meetings, workshops and all kinds of events to boost the movement, like the 4-day forum “The Railway in Emptied Spain” we had in December 2023 and January 2024. 

In synthesis, rural coworking spaces can and must be a part of the broad and diverse movement working with all key local stakeholders, as well as translocal networks, to revitalize rural areas across Europe, providing an oasis of creativity to attract and retain talent, and foster collaboration to ignite the Rural Revolution. 

On this note, the Forum ended with an open discussion to gather feedback for improvement, and ideas for next steps together. Complementary, participants filled out an online feedback form individually.

(2:30-4:00 PM) Visit to a regenerative winery and wine tasting

But wait a second, that was not the end, was it? Right after lunch, we paid a visit to our neighboring regenerative winery “El Majuelo del Abuelo” run by Fernando Iglesias -Jesus’es brother, thus closing the family loop at the heart of the Ribering project. We visited both the nearby vineyards and the winery, located right around the corner from Ribering, in the same block actually. Our fellow EU coworkers appreciated the passion and dedication Fernando exudes, demonstrating that despite all the incredibly hard work it takes, leading your own project, in your homeland, with the support of your family, and in alignment with your personal values, is always worth it. Because. We. Are. Rural. And. Proud. 

#EURuralCoworkingForum2024

Master presentation

Additional bibliography

• Satellite event: EU Rural Coworking Forum – Engaging local communities. https://climate-pact.europa.eu/articles-and-events/events/satellite-event-eu-rural-coworking-forum-engaging-local-communities-2024-11-27_en
• ‘Coworking’ rurales vs urbanos: así recuperan la esencia colaborativa del espacio que se ha pervertido en la ciudad. https://www.eldiario.es/viajes/coworking-rurales-espana_1_10621261.html
• El ‘coworking’ rural, ¿clave para combatir la despoblación en España?. https://www.uoc.edu/es/news/2023/203-coworking-rural-despoblacion-espana
• Shared Spaces, Local Faces: Navigating Opportunities and Challenges in Rural Coworking Spaces. https://allwork.space/2024/03/shared-spaces-local-faces-navigating-opportunities-and-challenges-in-rural-coworking-spaces/
• Rural Coworking Guide – Tips for the successful creation of a rural coworking space. https://www.cowocatrural.cat/storage/200/607de83bbdbf0.pdf
• The Role of Coworking in Rural and Suburban Communities. https://spherehub.medium.com/the-role-of-coworking-in-rural-and-suburban-communities-6211dddb329e
• Rural Coworking in Europe Status Quo, as far as we Know. https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/user_upload/FINAL_Rural_Coworking_in_Europe_als.pdf
• New European Bauhaus. https://new-european-bauhaus.europa.eu/index_en
• Emprendedoras europeas lanzan ideas para mejorar Aranda. https://www.diariodelaribera.net/hemeroteca/aranda/emprendedoraseuropeaslanzanideasparamejorararanda/