About EHC
A innovation project that reuses empty homes to create housing and prevent climate impact, placing trust at the center.
MJA LAB
María José Anitua (MJA)
A Hero's Journey
This is the story of a lawyer who didn’t like litigation
It may sound paradoxical, but it reflects a worldview that would eventually give rise to Conscious Collaborative Accord.
María José Anitua experienced firsthand, through her father, the emotional, physical, and vital toll of a judicial process. She soon realized that when a conflict reaches the courts, not only does the party receiving the unfavorable ruling lose: everyone loses.
She then decided to look for another way to practice law. She dedicated her life to exploring different responses, focusing on nurturing relationships rather than on the purely technical resolution of conflict.
As often happens, she gradually found scattered pieces experiences, approaches, practices that, over the years, began to fit together like parts of the same puzzle.
She started her career in a family law firm, where separations were handled with one lawyer for both parties. The goal was not to pit opposing interests against each other, but to build solutions.
Throughout her professional journey, she founded her own practice, where she explored restorative justice: prioritizing repairing harm and rebuilding relationships before they break. She also worked in real estate law and as a corporate advisor, which gave her a broader perspective on business dilemmas. At the same time, she became involved in the nonprofit sector.
At every stage, the guiding principle was the same: to generate lasting agreements.
Real connections. Solutions that did not break relationships but protected them.
The piece that brought everything together came with Collaborative Law, an approach seeking to resolve disputes without litigation. María José became one of its major advocates in Spain. She founded the Collaborative Law Association of Euskadi and promoted the inclusion of this concept into legislation.
Collaborative Law does not seek to avoid conflict that is impossible. What it does is manage it in such a way that the problem (and not the other person) becomes the common adversary to be addressed. Avoiding litigation is not about looking the other way, but about embracing a model where justice is not a zero-sum game, but an opportunity to create value.
In the end, everything was interconnected.
Conscious Collaborative Accord are not just another tool. They are the natural outcome of an entire professional life dedicated to nurturing relationships, transforming the way we connect, and proving that one can work from principles without sacrificing effectiveness. They are the result of all these pieces brought together throughout María José’s journey.
María José has not only developed CCAs: she has practiced them, sought them out, and has experienced it in a transformative way. And now she wants to share them with conscious people who also believe that the future is not built through confrontation, but through collaboration with purpose.
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An inspirational story and a Living example
At the age of four, she remembers sticking a hairclip into a socket to see what would happen… Afterall, she was lucky and the stock probably had a positive effect on her life and personality. Today, she has an enormous life force. In the TAX Administration, they called her the Atomic Ant.
At the age of 14, she had already decided to become a lawyer to help others. When she finished law degree, she decided that she wanted to dedicate herself to the human side of law.
At the age of 22, when her father died, (as the eldest of six siblings), she started negotiating rentals online back then, mainly by phone. In 2006, as a specialist in contracts and taxation in the real estate sector and by listening to her intuition, she proposed reorganizing her first professional child, AYL, accompanying their clients, of the real estate sector, to Eastern Countries, in anticipation of the real estate bubble. She helped establish AYL Poland.
This learning experience (with an office in Krakow) lasted for MJASL, her second professional child, more than 10 years. She was involved, at the age of 30 and pregnant with her first biological daughter, in her first major public-private real estate negotiation: the sale of the Teatro Principal of Vittoria. She did so as a board member of Vitoriana de Espectáculos (becoming the first woman to serve on the Board) in a very traditional company, where se rose to Vice-President in just a few years. This was a formative experience shared with her now dear friend José Ángel Cuerda, who served as Mayor of Vitoria-Gasteiz for 20 years.
Following the experience since 2012 with 12 collaborative law pilot projects, while serving as President of the Basque Association of Collaborative Law, and after stepping down from the presidency and selling her shares in the firm in 2020, she decided to focus, as a researcher, on social innovation, with a particular emphasis on the legal dimension.
In 2021, during an online presence course, with Arawana Hayashi, (MIT), she came to understand why phone negotiation had worked so well for her and her family. Intuition has always been one of her strengths.
In 2023, while preparing the timeline for her first important meeting in California, the political situation in the US shifted, and she decided to return home and focus her efforts on Europe.
She realized that everything happens for a reason and was able to see how all the dots were interconnected. Everything finally made sense.
Systemic Collaborative Model
Social Enterprise + Foundation + Association
For more than five years, we have developed a local project in Vitoria-Gasteiz focused on reusing empty homes through collaborative law.
Although our work has been local, we have always maintained a global vision to develop a scalable model.
Starting in 2026, we are shifting our focus toward improving digitalization in order to scale in rural areas, as well as applying Conscious Collaborative Agreements to other startups and investors who wish to innovate by integrating relational agreements into their projects.
With this new focus, we have agreed to dissolve the Lagunak Association and to terminate the Arte Ale Foundation.
Arteale will enter a liquidation process lasting up to three years. We remain hopeful that within this period it may be reactivated if we find individuals or entities aligned with its vision, mission, and values.
MJASL, Social Enterprise
- Empty Homes Collaborative developer and main founder.
- Know-how, Platform and Brand holder.
- Home cession and collaboration digital processes.
- Conflict prevention and management neighbourhood community.
- Design and coordination of other partners.
Arteale Foundation in Liquidation
- Entity of MJA LAB. First pilot experience in the re-use of empty homes for refugees: collaborative law and conscious accords.
- Pilot experience recognised as Good Practice for the European Comission in April 2020.
- Guarantor in the pilot experience thanks to donations from citizens.
Artealen Lagunak Association (Dissolved)
- Inclusion: Volunteer Association.
- Support for the integration of people at risk of exclusion into society through Networking.
- Transformation into an International Association to develop consciousness: empty homes as opportunity.
