History of Mondragon
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History of MCC
Roots of the Mondragon Cooperative Experiment
MCC began in a 1940's Basque town that had lost most of its community leaders during Franco's Spanish Civil War. The lack of responsible leaders combined with the industrial knowledge of the people was a perfect enviroment for change that led to the creation of MCC by a priest José Marìa Arizmendiarrieta. José Marìa Arizmendiarrieta was born on Aprill 22, 1915 to a farming family about thirty miles away from Mondragon. He joined the Catholic seminary at the age of thirteen and was ordained as a preist by the age of twenty-six. At this point in this life he was assigned to the "war-ravaged" town of Mondragon (Morrison, 46).
After a few years in Mondragon, Don José Marìa Arizmendiarrieta became a religious instructor at a small training school operated by a local steel company. This motivated him to start a independent community-run training school in October of 1943. This school was self-governed and self-fiananced, laying the ground work for what would become the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation's schools that would educate 45,000 students.
