SENDE – a Sustainable Coliving in Spain

Sende is a rural coworking and coliving space hidden in the Spanish mountains, on the border with Portugal. Inside this village of 20 inhabitants, a new house has been rebuilt (over 200 years old!) and remodelled into spaces where young creators (designers, writers, thinkers, illustrators, web developers, project writers and project evaluators, coders, entrepreneurs) and digital nomads live and work on their projects.

The project started in 2013 after Edi Sadiković visited a rural village and realized that the winning formula is in connecting digital nomads, village life and speedy internet. He established a coliving space in the Spanish village Senderiz, funded by the guests who live and work in the same village.

SENDE currently hosts and organises between four and eight Erasmus+ projects per year. These training courses support the transfer of their knowledge and skills to the youth sector and works also in the opposite way. When SENDE guests are not working, they enjoy the small things in life, such as cooking and having dinner together, holding long conversations, jogging, trekking or hiking while enjoying the Galician rural countryside, visiting small local markets and nearby villages, including the natural park Xurés.

SENDE promotes a sustainable approach to the local community. They work with and support 2 local restaurants, cafés, a shop, a bakery, a local construction company and a school. The guests in the coliving use their local products and develop initiatives with all 20 neighbours in the village. In the summer, SENDE triples their monthly income, which benefits the whole village. Together with the local school and the Youth Peace Ambassadors Network, they organised a conflict transformation event where students from 18 countries visited the local school and did 4 workshops with local students. SENDE also ran a two-day hackathon for refugees where programmers, activists, journalists, lawyers, students, youth workers and NGO professionals gave birth to innovative solutions to help refugees.

As SENDE has proven to be a sustainable small business, SENDE 2 is being built in Portugal, in a village near Setubal.