What is The Foundry

The Foundry is a self-organised, non-profit residency project and event space in a Galician village. It occupies an old forge and manor house with five hectares of land around it, and it is run by its members rather than by staff or owners.

People come here to work on their own projects, to host events, to learn something, to help look after the place, or simply to stay a while. There are more than a hundred members. Nobody makes a profit from it, and nobody owns it in the way people usually own buildings — the association is in the middle of transferring it into a commons, so that it can never be sold again.

This site is the association's own account of itself: what we do, how we decide things, what we have learned, and what we have not worked out yet. It is written by members, and it is deliberately unfinished.

Where it is

Bravos, in the concello de Ourol — a mountainous inland municipality of around 1,300 people in A Mariña Occidental, in the north of the province of Lugo. The nearest town is Viveiro, on the coast, about half an hour away by the C-640.

The village has worked iron for a very long time: the Galician heritage register lists a ferrería at Bravos and a chapel named after it. Locally the building is still called A Ferrería — the forge — which is where the association's name comes from.

See Visiting for how to get here.

Three commitments

The project has rested on the same three things since it began.

Openness. Anyone who wants to come can come. There is no complicated application procedure standing between a person and the place.

Self-organisation. The people who use the space maintain and run it. There are no paid staff and no management to appeal to.

No profit. The Foundry is a non-profit association and nobody can extract money from it. It was conceived as counter-infrastructure — a place at the edge of state and market.

How it came to be here

A fort and ironworks stood on this site from the 15th century; both were destroyed by an army a little over two centuries ago. People built a manor house from the stones of the ruined castle, and administered the surrounding farms from it. In the 1970s the manor was abandoned, as much of rural Galicia was.

In 2018 a group began renovating the buildings, working the land and organising events. In 2020 the association was formally founded. Since 2025 the project has been moving from being carried by its founder to being run collectively, and the buildings are being transferred into common ownership with a legal lock intended to prevent them ever returning to private hands.

That transition is the largest thing happening here, and much of this site is a record of it. The short version in dates is on the Timeline; the structures are described in How We Govern Ourselves.

What is here

Under one roof and around the yard: a theatre and large hall, wood and metal workshops, the old forge, a ceramics area in preparation, twelve bedrooms, six bathrooms, a kitchen and a bar. Outside: the huerta, a food forest, a dome, a mill by the river, a bus, a campsite, and five hectares of land with a river running through it.

The buildings and their repair are described on The Building; the land, the garden and the eucalyptus work on Land Care.

What happens here

Residencies and longer stays for people working on their own projects. Events hosted by members and by visiting collectives — workshops, retreats, courses, concerts, assemblies. A summer programme of self-organised weeks. Work weekends on the building and the land. A monthly reading circle. In August 2026 the first assembly of Galician blacksmiths was held here, which for a building named after its forge felt about right.

Everything on the calendar was proposed by somebody who wanted it to happen: Projects and Programmes.

Taking part

Everyone who stays overnight or organises an event becomes a member of the association — read the statutes, fill in the form, pay €20 a year. Members vote at the general assembly.

Beyond that there are several ways of being here: guest, volunteer, steward, co-liver, resident, each with its own balance of contribution and support. Write to foundry@bravosfoundry.com.

About this site

Each page is maintained by members and carries the date it was last changed. Where something is unresolved — an argument about how the land should be kept, a policy that failed and is being rebuilt — we have tried to say so plainly rather than present a finished surface. An archive that lists only successes is not much use to whoever comes next, including to us.

If you find something wrong, out of date or missing, write to the address above.