We feel that when trying to promote permaculture in the Spanish speaking world there are still several hurdles to overcome. One main hurdle seems to be a series of prejudices about permaculture, often confusing the term with an ecological gardening or cultivation technique. We have also personally experienced and received the feedback that the concept is either connected to something that is done only by people who have a lot of money (think big earthworks for example) or by people who use the idea of natural processes as an excuse for being lazy (and want everything for free). 

In this context we feel there is a clear need and opportunity in the Spanish speaking world to communicate the basic ideas of permaculture more explicitly and in detail, including all the ethical and other principles as well as all the permaculture flower petals or RetroSuburbia’s 3 B’s (Built Biological and Behavioural) and show its value by doing so. At the same time we feel this could be creating a ground to give impulse to a variety of permaculture projects throughout the Spanish speaking permaculture community, in all its social, economical and cultural contexts.

The idea is to create a meetingplace for Spanish speaking permaculture practictioners and/or interessees, where material optimized for different social networks could be co-created. These resources would be a toolkit for anyone that wants to promote permaculture in Spanish. This facilitated meetingplace and participatory process would give space to different voices and perspectives of permaculture, trying to reflect its diversity but also offer criteria of maintaining quality and some unifying guidelines. Ideally, the basic material resulting from this process would be available for free online through the CoLab website, open to be built on at a future stage.