"We were seeking inner awakening to achieve a collective change. But our aspirations were too grand." Miguel still remembers that day in September 1978 when the bell rang at eight in the morning at the Arco Iris commune in Lizaso, in the heart of the Ulzama Valley, Navarre. It signaled to all members that it was time to wake up and/or finish meditation and start the various tasks carried out around that rented mansion from a French nun order after ceasing to operate as a convent.
It was his last day there, but he was already thinking about returning. "I went for yoga but lived experiences that marked me. I felt that something was changing in me," he recalls. He returned home and noticed that his mind had been "liberated." Disillusioned left-wing activist with his own comrades, he returned in the summer of the following year for a course called Intensive Unconscious Opening. And there was no turning back.
After 10 days of yoga, dance, and cathartic music, his desire to "continue the experimentation" reached a point where he decided to leave his previous life. "We were people from the north who had lived in a closed, moralistic, and repressive Catholicism. We had a huge desire to reconnect with our bodies," he points out. The previous Miguel was left behind, and a new one was born in the largest commune in Europe and the first tantric sex community in Spain, now formed by 80 people: architects, doctors, workers, builders, and mechanics from different parts of the country.
Those experiences resurface with the movie 'Aro Berria,' written and directed by Irati Gorostidi Agirretxe, presented at the last edition of the San Sebastian Film Festival and set to premiere in theaters on December 12. In the film, several workers from the water meter factory in San Sebastian, tired of the labor dynamics, decide to establish a pioneering community in meditation, free love, and yoga. However, this new utopian environment will not be immune to conflicts.
Arco Iris was Spain's first tantric community, a "path to overcome the fear of life and death." The credits of 'Aro berria' show real photos of their experiences.GRUPO GAIA
'Aro berria' is the result of detailed research by Gorostidi, also materialized in an exhibition, 'Arcoíris 82', at Tabakalera San Sebastian. The filmmaker had the sources very close, as her parents went through the community: her mother from the meter factory and her father from the autonomous workers' movement.
The Arco Iris commune was a compendium of spiritual traditions led by Emilio Fiel, Miyo, "the guide." He was 28 years old when the commune started, although a decade earlier he had founded the Sadhana Center for Yoga and Meditation in the Basque Country. After studying economics and experiencing May 1968 in France, he participated in numerous anti-Franco demonstrations before traveling to Tibet, Pakistan, and India, where he took note of the so-called Human Potential Movement of guru Osho, also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
"I was never with Osho, but we walked parallel paths," acknowledges Miyo. He usually does not "dwell on the past," but makes an exception for Crónica. "I have been hearing about the movie 'Aro berria' for years from all corners, but no one has contacted me. No one has called me, and it's strange. I thought it was because it was going to have a novelistic argument," he says. "There are many things not mentioned in the movie, but they don't have to be said. Irati does honest work that reflects the fundamentals," summarizes Miguel, who has seen the film.
Recalling that time, Miyo highlights that "everything was art, joy, dances, releasing blockages, free love... The whole experience of experimenting with the new reality. It was a wonderful period." The commune's guide states that "around 100,000 people passed through it." "Its success lay in the interest among the youth to change, to experiment with new things, for freedom. Coming from where we did, we had no idea about anything but a great enthusiasm," adds Miguel.
During filming, some actors recreated the courses held in the commune for 15 days.Apellaniz and de Sosa
In Arco Iris, the austerity of the yogis gave way to a search for fulfillment through love, sex, partying, and dancing. There was "neither private property nor possession in relationships." Neither coffee, alcohol, nor tobacco were allowed, and it was boasted that they were the first to "confront psychotic outbreaks and help people overcome heroin addiction." Two vegetarian meals were served daily, and rooms were freely distributed: couples, two or three people shared, with mattresses on the floor and no chairs. Children slept with their parents until the age of three, after which they slept in a community setting, supervised by different members on a rotating basis.
At its peak, there were about thirty monitors offering various courses: yoga and relaxation, Rolfing method - a form of body and movement therapy that reorganizes the body's connective tissue to function more effectively - cathartic massages, sewing, pottery, fabrics... Individual consultations cost 1,000 pesetas, weekend courses 3,000, and weekly courses 8,000. "There was a lot of work there, we weren't hippies sunbathing. Everything was prefabricated, with a lot of carpentry," emphasizes Miyo. The Lizaso commune also had orchards, a bread oven, and a printing press where they produced their own publications covering a wide range, from tantra to Sufism, through natural childbirth, the method used for giving birth in the commune. "I was in charge of the printing press," says Miguel. The aim was to spread the word: "Simply put, there is nothing good or bad in morality, everything is energy, and it depends on how you live it: if you let it flow, it's good. If you repress it, it's bad."
For Miyo, the highlight of Lizaso was in 1981 when he turned 33. Gurus from around the world claimed they had "never seen a place that fulfilled the ideals so much," even though they changed traditions several times. There were another 30 lateral communities spread throughout the country. In them, Miyo did notice some "issues" with people who "ended up smoking joints or losing control when they felt someone had taken their girlfriend or boyfriend." But all those incidents were foreign to Lizaso. "There, conflict resolution was clear: if there was a problem, both parties paid the price. Nothing more than that. And that meant a seven-day retreat, being in silent rooms...," he recounts.
He still remembers the occasion when three people claimed to be "the reincarnation of Jesus Christ." "When they bothered us too much, we would carry them out on stretchers to the door and leave them together to resolve their issues. And the winner would come back and tell us who the true son of God was." Miguel describes Miyo's leadership as "skillful and audacious." "He had a great ability to adapt. We all appreciate that he had the vision to create Arco Iris, but he didn't know how to empathize with others," he points out.
Expansion to Barcelona and Tarragona
The Arco Iris community lasted a decade. From Lizaso, it spread to Arenys de Munt (Barcelona) and Alcover (Tarragona), where they built an Arab castle "and the largest iron-free dome in Europe." In 1987, after what Miyo called Harmonic Convergence, the Arco Iris community came to an end. "Arco Iris had served to move from the third to the fourth dimension," and Emilio Fiel converted. After a year and a half sabbatical and "paying the appropriate prices to as many people as followed me," he began "work toward the fifth dimension": small groups, personal work, internal experiences, and no gathering of a hundred people under the same roof. Today, Miyo offers courses, workshops, and celebrations at his ChrisGaia School, located in Liurama, a 3.5-hectare estate on the slopes of the Moncayo Natural Park, 60 km from Zaragoza.
"My parents have a rather critical view of how the community works. And that's what I've been taught at home," recalls Gorostidi Agirretxe. "But for me, it would be very difficult to take a view that did not value the place from which they approached the community. There were workers' committees in the factories, neighborhood committees, anti-nuclear committees too. And that fabric, at the end of the Franco regime, harbored the hope that it would lead to a radical transformation of society. When they saw that this was not the case, they were hugely disappointed."
Hence the appeal of utopian communities. "It's easy to think that when you live in isolation in a smaller human group, it will be easier to break with social norms," says the director. "Perhaps then there was more hope of achieving this."
That search was also sexual. In 'Aro berria', abortions play an important role in the narrative. "When I started researching, I was very surprised to learn that these issues were very much in vogue at the time. My parents were talking about polyamory, just like now," says the director. "Perhaps they were much more daring. And they expressed it in a particular way. They proclaimed: If we are going to question all the social norms we have inherited—family, marriage, partnership—we have to break with everything."
Unsatisfactory result
However, the result was not as liberating and satisfying as they had hoped. "I think they hurt themselves a lot," says Gorostidi. "Because, in reality, those mandates are very internalized. For example, with the issue of sexual liberation, they imposed on themselves practices that frightened or even disgusted them. Perhaps they were also very exciting and aroused their desire, because desire operates on a very unconscious level. But, according to the testimonies collected, there was a lot of pain because it was very violent."
The filmmaker continues her story, saying that when the community was considering liberation, "it was said that tantra would come and solve all the problems we have with sexuality: we have found an answer here. And when I read her texts from that time, there is a kind of naivety, a failure to understand that when it comes to the burden of reproduction, there is a burden that falls on women."
That's why Gorostidi has always had a hard time with polyamory. "My parents already went through that and it turned out badly. And I find it very difficult to see it as a solution." Returning to the subject of naivety, she recalls a phrase from her parents: "We thought we could let go of everything, but then we couldn't. We hurt each other a lot and it was very disappointing."
"We were very young people with little life experience. There was goodwill on everyone's part, but the changes were very demanding. Difficulties and contradictions arose in an environment where criticism was not welcome. Everyone went their own way. Given who we were, it couldn't have ended any other way. Everyone has their own view of what that was like," Miguel sums up the end of the Arco Iris community.
"It was a wonderful period. I am grateful to the magnificent warriors who were there, even those who later gave up many of those things because they couldn't assimilate them into their daily lives. It's clear that, like all periods, Arco Iris had its birth, its effervescence and, in a way, its germination and flowering. Then, you just have to leave. I couldn't stay any longer in a role that didn't feel right for me. Paradise also has its shadows," concludes Miyo.