They build a better world

This Sunday marks the International Day of Cooperatives around the world: cooperativism is a movement with deep historical roots that today offers answers to some of the major challenges of our time, such as the polarization that threatens democracy, climate change, the fight against inequality, the collective ownership of culture, and access to decent and affordable housing. Precisely because of the "vital role that cooperatives play in sustainable development," the United Nations proclaimed 2025 as the International Year of Cooperatives, under the slogan: "Cooperatives build a better world."

Modern cooperativism was born in the 19th century, in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, as part of the struggle for the emancipation and dignity of the working class. In 1884, in Rochdale, a town on the outskirts of Manchester, a group of textile artisans founded the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society: a consumer cooperative providing access to "honest food at honest prices" that served as an inspiration for modern cooperativism. That democratic and open cooperative implemented universal suffrage for women and men more than half a century before the women's suffrage movement was organized, and created the minimum wage fifty years before New Zealand became the first country to implement this public policy. In Catalonia, we also have pioneers such as Micaela Chalmeta (1863-1951), who fought for equality between women and men through cooperativism.

Cooperativism calls us to empower ourselves, to regain control of our destiny.

In this world undergoing multiple crises—climatic, political, and institutional, to name just a few of our ills—cooperativism is a lever for transformation in the hands of citizens and, therefore, a hope for humanity. Faced with the rise of polarization and extremism, with the hatred and extermination that crushes people and their human rights, with an economic model that pushes us toward an unhealthy planet, with the dismantling of international cooperation, the United Nations system, and multilateralism, some of us believe that cooperativism is part of a real and tangible response. Ten percent of the world's working population works for one of the nearly three million cooperatives.

Catalonia and Spain are rich in successful cooperatives, such as Mondragón, the leading business group in the Basque Country, which is key to Gipuzkoa being one of the regions with the least inequality in the world (with a GINI coefficient lower than that of Finland and Norway); innovative companies such as Som Energia and Som Mobilitat, through which citizens drive the energy transition and sustainable mobility; and Abacus, the cooperative I have the honor of chairing: with more than one million consumer members and six hundred working members, we promote a transformative project serving education and a diverse culture.

The social economy and cooperativism are an economy of reconciliation and a school of democracy. In these difficult times, when once again "the old world is dying and the new is yet to come," cooperativism calls on us to empower ourselves, to regain control of our destiny through collective action and to imagine a better future. To achieve this, we need creative and dynamic cooperatives, connected to society, yet solid and capable of scaling up at the national and European levels to become benchmark companies.