Mondragón

Mondragon is also the name of a commune of the Vaucluse département, in southern France.

Arrasate or Mondragón (Basque and Spanish official names, Mondragoe is an unofficial Basque name) - is a town and municipality in Gipuzkoa province, Basque Country, Spain. There are about 25,000 inhabitants.

It is known mainly as the place of origin of the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC), the world's largest worker cooperative, whose foundation was inspired in the 1940s by Father José María Arizmendiarrieta. In 2002 the MCC contributed 3.7% towards the total GDP of the Basque Country and 7.6% to the industrial GDP. The valley of the High Deba where it is located enjoyed a high level of employment in the 1980s while the rest of the Basque industrial areas suffered from the steel crisis.

Noted poverty expert and sociology professor Barbara J. Peters (Southampton College, Long Island University) has studied the incorporated and entirely resident-owned Basque town of Mondragón, Spain. "In Mondragón, I saw no signs of poverty. I saw no signs of extreme wealth," Peters said. "I saw people looking out for each other…..It's a caring form of capitalism.”[Spanish Town without Poverty, Newswise Jan 2000]

The spa at Santa Águeda (now a psychiatric hospital) was the location of the 1897 murder of Spanish politician Antonio Cánovas del Castillo by Michele Angiolillo.

Mondragon University

Mondragon also serves as base of Mondragon Univertsity, a private university created on 1997, which is heavily connected with the MCC companies. Almost all the graduates find their first job within 3 months after completing their studies due to this strong link. Mondragon Unibertsitatea is divided in an engineering, humanities and enterprise faculties. The faculty of engineering is both at Mondragon and Goierri. The humanities one is located at Escoriaza, and the enterprise one at Bidasoa. It currently has a volume of students of about 3500, which is growing fastly. Almost all the students are from Guipuzkoa and surrounding villages, even if in the last years, the number of students from Bilbao, San Sebastian and the basque country capital, Vitoria-Gasteiz, has increased significantly.

External links

• Municipality pages in Basque and Spanish
• MCC homepage (multi-lingual)
• ARRASATE/MONDRAGÓN in the Bernardo Estornés Lasa - Auñamendi Encyclopedia (Euskomedia Fundazioa) Information available in Spanish

References

• We Build the Road as We Travel: Mondragon, A Cooperative Social System, Roy Morrison, ISBN 0965890317

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