And when I looked up, the mountains were there
When Martin Fleischer received the call from Coral Walnut, his girlfriend, to tell her that the inn of his town, Puebla of the Sierra, was going to be empty, he was sitting in an Asian jungle, in flip flops, computer in hand and surrounded by monkeys. His immediate thought was that if he could telework from there, he could also do it from the Sierra de Madrid. It was 2019 and The Coworking Shelter it already had the status of an idea.
“The light bulb went on and I thought that if, instead of maintaining the inn, we reconverted the place, we would attract young people and seasonality would end. Digital nomads suffer from loneliness and it is important that it is generated the feeling of community where they are teleworking. What better than offering it to them, than offering them a small town where 70 people live and they are going to meet you”, Fleischer, founder together with Agustín Gago, of this coworking and coliving in the Sierra del Rincon.
Here you don't just telecommute, here you create community
“We have 74 people registered and living here we will be about 50 or 60. We are a very small town and we have suffered a excessive depopulation. In the 1950s or 1960s, there were 300 of us living in Puebla,” Aurelio Bravo, mayor of Puebla de la Sierra, a town located about 110 kilometers from Puerta del Sol, tells us.
Fleischer realized the same thing when he began to investigate and that is why El Refugio Coworking was conceived as something more than a place of passage, as a place to create community. A win-win in which the digital nomads feel sheltered and the town recovers movement.
“The concept of coworking and coliving goes in the construction of a community around that place, in the feeling of belonging and participation of the people who are going to live there. A person who comes to telework and then leaves is not the same as someone who comes, generates links and gets involved with the place. It's much deeper," says Fleischer.
The digital nomads feel sheltered and the town recovers movement
In fact, the name itself, El Refugio, is already a declaration of intent. “When we chose the name it was not only because it is in a valley in the Sierra de Madrid, but also because people who travel the world work alone and find in our project that feeling of community, of protection, of shelter, which is also what is needed for someone to be encouraged to create things of value”.
Because in this coworking they have already seen businesses being born. Your cook-barista, Luis Miguel Vivas, is working on a cold brew based on organic coffee from Kenya and roasted in the Basque Country. “What he does is a kind of cold infusion with the coffee, generating a natural energy boost. We are supporting him in the marketing part, with the design of the brand and it will be a product that we take out from here”.
is also Sarah Zuniga, a girl from Tres Cantos who he made mead at her house. “She started coming to El Refugio and we got her suppliers of honey from the town, Miguel and Alejandro Villamizar, which is organic and with less honey it makes more liters of drink. She is already thinking of coming to town.” Or the creators of The Next Work Concept, an accommodation reservation platform prepared for teleworking that took its first steps in El Refugio Coworking.
Coworking spaces are, for many of their users, sources of collaboration, synergies and, in some cases, even income. In El Refugio they go a step further by adding the coliving because "in addition to sharing office space, we live together and that generates a bond, a relationship of greater trust”, summarizes Fleischer.
A person who comes to telework and then leaves is not the same as someone who comes, generates links and gets involved with the place
To do this, they have made all the necessary changes to adapt the building which, among other things, has three meeting rooms with space for teleworking. But, without a doubt, the one that is the jewel in the crown is the community kitchen where this creation of links is favored. At El Refugio they have single and double rooms, as well as the possibility of only reserving space in the coworking area by contacting them through their website.
“We are open to whoever wants to come, to do so. We give priority to people who want to come to spend more time than just the weekend, to people who want to come to telework because they provide a different value: they are freelancers, self-employed, they come to create projects…”
From starting as a group of four they have become 12. "The population in the town has increased, the age range has dropped and they have their work projects."
In this sense the mayor pronounces. “Delighted with life because the town has given more movement of people. We would like it to be much more, but you can't ask for pears from the elm tree. We will have to go little by little”.