Last Friday, July 2, at 18 p.m., we held our Ordinary General Assembly. After a long time, due to the alert situation caused by COVID-19, we were able to meet in person at Casal de Ca L'Isidret in the Poblenou neighborhood (Barcelona), limiting capacity and maintaining all health safety measures. We also, however, gave the option to participate online, being this the first hybrid Assembly in the history of our cooperative.

The first thing to note is that despite the new format, it was a success of participation, with around 50 partners participating in person and close to a hundred connecting online via the Zoom platform. In other words that is, we have maintained the level of participation in the assemblies before the pandemic. In the technical field, moreover, there was no problem so that everyone could participate in the debate and the votes, was present at la sala or connect online, maintaining an orderly and fluid debate at all times.

The Assembly, as usual, approved the cooperative's annual accounts. 2020 ended with a balanced income statement between expenses and income of 14 million euros, with a positive working capital of one million. Most of our income already comes from our own funds, from the co-management of cooperative housing projects that we have underway and the quotas of the social base (close to being more than 1000 members!). The progressive start-up of more projects means that we have a significant forecast in the coming years to increase the usage quotas and also to meet the amortizations.

Then, the central point of the General Assembly was choose a new composition of the executive body of the cooperative, the Governing Council. At the last Assembly of 2020, a change to the Statutes was approved to modify the entity's governance, with the aim of adapting the governance model to the growth of recent years, balancing the weight of the different types of partners within of the entity, and deploy the figure of working partner. As a result of this change, the Board of Directors varies its composition with around 10 members and incorporating the different types of members with a balance between the different groups: expectant members and members in a promotion or coexistence project, working members and collective members collaborators The different candidacies were voted on in secret and with a weighted vote according to the type of member, and we are very happy to see how practically all of them were able to go ahead with the majority and almost unanimous support of the Assembly.

And, of course, the most positive and exciting moment of every Assembly is being able to vote to go ahead with new cooperative housing projects, and hearing the members of the driving groups present it to the entire social base to encourage its approval. In this case the Assembly ratified the acceptance of the surface right of the plot of the Barcelona City Council in Sarrià for the creation of the Can70 cooperative housing project for the elderly. And the purchase of a Mas in Argelaguer (La Garrotxa) was also presented and approved for the creation of the project ofEl Turrós, a cooperative housing that will also have economic activity related to agricultural and forestry management.

To finish, two of the points that brought more debate were the modification of the Statutes by incorporate measures for the prevention and action in case of sexual harassment, and the approval for the creation of an income quota in order to contribute to the Mandatory Reserve Fund. The first point, referring to the Statutes, ended up being approved by a large majority. On the other hand, the creation of the new income quota was rejected by a few votes and it will be necessary to continue debating it.

After the Assembly, all the partners who participated in person were able to visit the finished works of the project La Balma from the partners who will very soon receive the keys to move in, thus expanding the cooperative's coexistence projects. What better way to end an assembly than seeing how agreements can take shape!