In the smoking rubble of the global economy after the financial meltdown of 2008, many people felt that capitalism as it was constructed, was unsustainable. The gap between rich and poor, haves and have nots was widening, with the aspirational middle shrinking. Society itself seemed to be crumbling. Some people looked for other solutions and ways of living. The revival of the cooperative movement and cooperative enterprises was strongly linked to the global economic crisis of 2008. The Cooperative Integral Catalana (CIC) was one of a new wave of “open cooperatives” that aimed to rebuild society from the bottom up, practicing economic and political self-management, across the value chain, and bringing together all the basic elements of an economy including production, consumption, funding and a common currency. Primarily focused on a local and regional level within Catalonia, its next challenge was to broaden itself and link into the global peer to peer societies.
