Seven seasons in, the morning in Anceu still starts the same way: chilly mist between the trees, the coliving waking up slowly, the coffee machine running. But the way we live here has changed over the years.
When Anceu Coliving began, the idea was simple and maybe a little wild: bring people from different countries to a small village in rural Galicia and see what happens when they share a roof, a kitchen, and a few months of their lives. Family dinners every night of the week. Endless energy. Constant motion. It was wonderful, and it was a lot.
This is our seventh season, and we’ve learned something that long-running coliving spaces have known for years: the magic lasts longer when you give it room to breathe.
A slower, more sustainable pace
The biggest shift this year is rhythm. Instead of running the coliving non-stop, month after month, we now alternate: a month or two of coliving, then a block dedicated to projects, then coliving again. It’s a pattern borrowed from communities that have stayed passionate for more than a decade. Doing the same thing month after month wears novelty thin. We needed some variety to keep it alive.
So the year now moves in chapters. This spring opened with project work in March, followed by our first coliving months in April and May. After a short break for RuralGPT (more on that below), we reopen from mid-June to mid-July. We pause in high summer, and that month is reserved for friends and family, a quieter time to enjoy the house with our loved ones. Then we return for a longer coliving stretch from late summer into early October, before the autumn fills up with projects, company gatherings, and courses.
A winter season, for the first time
We also tried something genuinely new last winter: for the first time, Anceu stayed open from December through February. That only became possible thanks to renovations the year before, a newly insulated roof and heat-pump heating in every room, replacing the old oil system, which finally allowed us to make the house warm enough to enjoy through a Galician winter.
It was a smaller, deliberately different season. Unlike in normal coliving months, there was no community manager: the group ran itself, self-managed, made up of people who already knew the coliving and what they were getting into. That cosier, quieter, do-it-yourself rhythm turned out to work well, and it’s something we’re keen to explore further in the years to come.
Shorter stays, wider doors
For the normal coliving months, we’ve also rethought how long people stay. For years our minimum was a full month, because we wanted people to fully immerse themselves in the group and get to know each other properly. This season we lowered it to two weeks, with a maximum of two months.
The reason is about access more than anything. We kept hearing from people who loved the idea but simply couldn’t commit to a month, and we’d rather welcome them for two weeks than turn them away. Coliving still isn’t very well known to most people, so the more who get to experience it properly, the better for everyone. A two-week door is an easier one to walk through.
Putting down deeper local roots: Fixar
If there’s one theme that defines where Anceu is heading, it’s this: we’re less interested in being a stop on a nomadic route, and more interested in being part of the local community.
That’s why we’ve quietly stepped back from the idea of “digital nomadism.” What we’re looking for now are people drawn to rural life itself, people who want to contribute to the community, connect with the area, and in some cases maybe even imagine a future here.
Giving back was already the idea behind our ongoing Rural Hackers initiative, and our partnership with Fixar builds on the same impulse. Fixar is a regional Galician program that brings together people already revitalizing the countryside, some who’ve recently made the move, others already rooted here, running their own local initiatives. Through Fixar, a meaningful share (30-40%) of the people you’ll meet at Anceu each month are locals: Galician entrepreneurs, makers, and creatives running their own projects in rural areas.
The mix is the point. International colivers spend a few weeks living alongside people who know this region intimately. Visitors get a genuine window into the region rather than a postcard version; locals get a taste of the international vibe and the wider network that passes through Anceu. Friendships form. Contacts are exchanged. People come back. And slowly, a lasting network takes shape, not just inside our village, but across Galicia, connecting Anceu to other rural creative spaces doing parallel work in cinema, fashion design, and community building.
A community, we’ve come to believe, works on two scales at once: the intimate one inside the house, and the broader one woven between people across the region.
A new layer: RuralGPT, applied AI from the countryside
The most recent addition to what Anceu offers sits a little outside the classic coliving idea, and we’re proud of it.
RuralGPT is an immersive, applied-AI residency: a few focused days in Galicia where professionals learn to put artificial intelligence to work in their actual jobs. Not theory, not a months-long course, but practical, hands-on work with real tools, all-inclusive with accommodation and meals, in a small group.
What we like about it is who it’s for. These aren’t tech specialists. They’re people in everyday professions, someone running a care home, a marketing agency, or a classroom, who can reclaim hours of their week by letting AI handle the tedious parts: drafting a quote, answering routine emails, preparing an invoice. We even ask participants to send us their “worst tasks” in advance, and we spend the residency tackling those head-on. The aim is straightforward: give people back their time, and make sure the benefits of these tools reach beyond the usual IT circles.
The very first RuralGPT residency is running at Anceu as we write this, and it won’t be the last. More editions are planned, including sessions focused on AI for everyday work and AI combined with WordPress. If you’d like to know when the next dates open, keep an eye on ruralgpt.gal and our Instagram.
Why come to Anceu this year
Seven seasons in, Anceu has become more than a place to work remotely with a nice view. It’s a rhythm of coliving and projects, a bridge between people arriving from across the world and people building lives in Galicia, as well as a launchpad for new ideas like RuralGPT.
If what draws you is fast wifi and a change of scenery, you’ll find that here, fiber optics, thirty minutes from the city, surrounded by forest. But if what draws you is something deeper, a real community, a slower pace, and the chance to be part of a transforming rural Galicia rather than just passing through it, then this is the season to come and see for yourself.
We’d love to have you.