The Maitelan care co-operative

A model for the democratisation of care work

The article below describes the origins and working methods of the Maitelan care cooperative in the Spanish Basque Country. We havetaken it from issue 1/2026 'Strategies of Hope' of the magazine LUXEMBURG with the permission of the editors, for which we are very grateful.The magazine is published by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. LUXEMBURG repeatedly focuses on reflections, experiments and actions that are significant for a care movement: https://zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/schwerpunkt/care-und-soziale-reproduktion/

In this context, we would also like to refer to the report on the event on the feminist general strike in the Basque Country, which was organised by the Care Revolution network event group with Raul Zelik in November 2025.

The text canbe found here onthe LUXEMBURG website.

By Aratz Soto Gorrotxategi, Liseth Díaz Molina and Andoni Egia Olaizola

In recent decades, the industrialised town of Hernani in the Spanish Basque Country has undergone a development that is typical of many industrialised capitalist countries: a growing proportion of very old people has led to an increased demand for care services. The increased integration of female workers into the wage labour market has also meant that today it is mainly migrant women from countries on the so-called periphery who carry out this care work - often under the most difficult conditions. In the municipality of Hernani, which has a population of 20,000, the care sector has also grown considerably in recent years and is characterised by precarity and irregularity. Most of the people who work here, whether formally or informally, are migrants without secure residence status.

In view of these conditions, some of the city's care workers set up a cooperative in 2020. In collaboration with the city council, they created the Maitelan cooperative as an institutional form to improve their working conditions, regulate their residence status and valorise their work. It is an example of the local development of feminist counter-power and the expansion of democratic forms of organising care work. How did this come about?

Local development strategy "Hernani Burujabe" [1]

The left-wing party alliance EH Bildu (United Basque Country) has been in power in Hernani since 2011. It consists of three parties: Batasuna, which was banned between 2003 and 2011 due to its proximity to the left-wing separatist ETA and represents the institutional arm of the Basque liberation movement; Eusko Alkartasuna, the Basque social democracy, and Alternatiba, a split-off from the Communist Party of the Basque Country. Hernani was and is an important place for the Basque independence and labour movement. In recent years, it has also been an important centre for feminist struggles. The Kulturarteko Plaza Feminista - a public institution that houses the city council's equality department, but is also organised by feminist and anti-racist movements - has contributed to this.

Thanks to the left-wing city council, the Department for Local Economic Development has been pursuing a development path based on the principles of the social and solidarity economy since 2013. Around seven years of collaboration with political, economic and social actors in this field created the conditions for taking the next step: a project that combines a strategy for achieving economic autonomy with the explicit aim of transcending the framework of capitalist regulation. What exactly such a project could look like emerged in 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown. At the time, Hernani was in dire straits: every day, more and more people were asking the city council for help with food and energy supplies, access to the internet and care and support for lonely elderly people. Once again, it became clear that neither private households nor the market or public administration alone have the necessary capacity to guarantee the material conditions for a good life. It was therefore urgent to think about a new relationship between public institutions, the economy and self-organisation and to aim for a post-neoliberal order with the help of a public-common partnership model.

Democratisation of care in Hernani

The history of the Maitelan care cooperative therefore began long before it was actually founded. In addition to the solidarity economy, its roots lie in long-standing feminist efforts to democratise care work in the region. Between 2016 and 2020, the city's local development department supported a feminist forum for this purpose, which brought together all of the region's equal opportunities officers and the anti-racist movement of Hernani. During the debates, it became clear that the extreme precarity suffered by women workers in domestic care is one of the most pressing problems in the care sector - a problem that could and had to be addressed at the intersection of the feminist anti-racist movement and the local state.

One result was the decision by the municipal government of Hernani, in collaboration with AHMER [2] and the Institute for Cooperative Law and Social Economy GEZKI, to promote the establishment of a non-profit social cooperative, which would primarily include migrant care workers. Maitelan was founded at the beginning of 2020, one month before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic and thus in a situation in which the need to organise care work differently at local level had once again become apparent. And it was a response to a threefold urgency: firstly, to improve the working conditions of migrant care workers; secondly, to make their work visible and enhance its value; and thirdly, to permanently guarantee care workers' access to social rights, including secure residence and a work permit, through the cooperative.

Work that cultivates and changes social interaction

Maitelan primarily offers home care and cleaning services as well as a range of other services such as counselling, hospital support and childcare. For example, the cooperative is involved in the "Auzozaintza" project, which provides services for older people on low incomes who are affected by loneliness, including a visitor service that also involves the neighbourhood. Events are organised, creating spaces for encounters and strengthening social networks in the respective residential areas. This project was made possible through collaboration with the Hernani city council and the Zabalduz social cooperative, whose focus as a social agency is on community and neighbourhood work, among other things.

A model of democratic governance

Maitelan's cooperative model includes working members as well as user and cooperating members. At the beginning, the cooperative consisted of four working members, four user members, i.e. people who are dependent on care, and 20 cooperating members or project partners. There are now nine working comrades, nine users and 51 project partners, including around 20 other cooperatives from the region. In 2025, Maitelan employs a total of 16 carers, although not all of them are (yet) members of the cooperative. The co-operative members contribute to Maitelan's development by taking on tasks in the areas of accounting, business and management, communication and public relations. Over time, this close cooperation has created a strong regional network of individuals, companies and social actors who are collectively committed to the democratisation of care work.

The cooperative structure also enables democratic internal negotiation, as the workers play a leading role on the one hand and users and other social interest groups can influence the cooperative's services and activities on the other. The Board of Directors consists of three workers, one user and one cooperation partner. It is elected by the general assembly, makes strategic decisions and monitors compliance with the cooperative's objectives. However, the most important decisions are made at the annual general assembly, where every member of the cooperative has a vote and where controversial issues are also discussed. The decision-making and management structures are therefore highly democratic. This also makes the cooperative a place for collective learning processes in terms of self-organisation. As it is a non-profit co-operative, the economic profits are not distributed to investors, but are fully reinvested to improve the project. They are used to expand the services, for further training, to increase wages or to purchase infrastructure and work clothing. The social mission thus always takes precedence over economic interests.

Stability and care for the workers

Women workers are the main beneficiaries of the co-operative model. In a sector characterised by precariousness, instability and isolation, the cooperative guarantees social rights, offers community and recognition and thus contributes to greater self-confidence and security for the workers. The carers have permanent contracts and their wages are higher than the collective agreement for carers in the public sector in Spain and are adjusted annually. They also have the opportunity to become members of the co-operative themselves. They are involved in the decision-making processes as well as the company's assets through cooperative shares. In addition, the cooperative endeavours to find answers to the special challenges of the care sector: Working hours are not organised according to the most profitable cycle, as in private-sector care services, but according to the needs of workers and users - this contributes to greater time sovereignty. The collective structure of the cooperative also mediates in the highly asymmetrical relationship between workers and users, which is often characterised by abusive behaviour.

Nevertheless, caring for people remains physically and mentally challenging. That is why the cooperative introduced two new training programmes in 2025 to contribute to the well-being of its employees. The first programme aims to provide psychological support for carers, offering supervision and emotional support in challenging situations, while the other focuses on physical regeneration from the strenuous work involved in caring for people at home. Both programmes create a protected space for active listening, physical activities and mutual care. In this sense, the co-operative's premise is clear: only those who are well cared for themselves can seriously care for others.

Contradictions that remain

In the first year and a half after its foundation, there was a great upswing, not least due to institutions from the region joining the cooperative as cooperating members and strengthening its goals and perspectives. "Town meetings" were held in which working groups were formed on the topics of training home carers, communication, business development and self-care. All of this gave Maitelan's cause strong support. However, the coronavirus pandemic combined with inexperienced management soon led to financial difficulties. This forced the cooperative to focus more on its core tasks and invest less time in organising neighbourhood meetings and networking, even though these were of particular value to the project's transformational purpose.

Another challenge is that users are less involved in the cooperative than hoped. As a rule, they turn to Maitelan because of an acute need for care and not because they have an overriding interest in the project. The situation of needing care makes it difficult for many users and their families to participate, which is why the requirement to develop the services in close consultation with the carers remains partially unfulfilled.

Beyond the aspects mentioned above, care workers are confronted with other serious social challenges. The care sector is and remains highly feminised and devalued. As it is mainly migrant women who work in the co-operative, they face racist and sexist discrimination on an almost daily basis, which affects their mental health. Neither of these problems can really be solved by founding a co-operative.

Transformation perspective

Even if care cooperatives alone cannot overcome the many challenges facing care work in our society, Maitelan shows how a social and economic transformation of care work and its democratisation can be progressively promoted. Since the co-operative's business decisions and practices are not geared towards increasing value and economic profitability, they also challenge the rules of the game imposed by capital.

In addition, the autonomous organisation and self-management, which focus on the needs of the workers, promote their emancipation. In the struggles for care work initiated by Maitelan, a democratic negotiation of needs also takes place, which is elementary for other economic and care relationships (see Sauer in this issue). The mere existence of a collective, solidary project that is largely supported by racialised and migrant women and takes the needs of users seriously can nurture hope for an alternative to the prevailing order in times of multiple crises and the global rise of right-wing forces.

Through its local roots and active promotion of social interaction, the cooperative also builds intensive relationships with users and social actors in the region. In this way, it supports networks that do not pursue economic goals, but instead aim to respond to the care needs of people in the region and strengthen solidarity and cohesion. From this consolidated position and thanks to the relationships established, the people involved in the project can in turn increase the social influence of the cooperative model and a solidarity economy.

Conclusions

With the help of the local authorities, Hernani has succeeded in creating more humane working conditions in a sector that has historically been made invisible but is highly important for the preservation of life. It is particularly important to emphasise that this has also led to the workers' legal residence status being secured at a local level - a cause that the transnational movement of cities in solidarity has been fighting for for years. The support network within and outside the co-operative also offers support in situations of abuse.

Thus, despite many difficulties in its establishment in a sector characterised by low productivity, high labour intensity, a shadow economy and competition from profit-oriented companies, Maitelan has proven to be an effective instrument for improving the situation of migrant care workers and has made a contribution to the democratisation of the economy. In this sense, Maitelan can be a model for how, despite market dominance and the modest size of the project, spaces for feminist and anti-racist counter-power can be created, the democratisation of care can be advanced and horizons can be opened up in which good care conditions are at the centre of the socio-economic system.

Translated from the Spanish by Barbara Fried

Footnotes:

[1] Burujabe is Basque and means "self-sufficient" or "to be one's own master".

[2] AHMER (Asociación Multicultural de Hernani) is a non-profit anti-racist and feminist organisation that supports migrants
association that supports migrants with legal advice and training.