National Post (National Edition)
THE HOMEMADE CATHEDRAL THAT NOBODY WANTS
MAKESHIFT CHURCH NEAR MADRID IS ONE MAN’S LIFE’S WORK
Justo Gallego has spent most of his 91 years building a cathedral in his town of Mejorada del Campo, near Barajas airport in Madrid.
The problem is that nobody seems to want it.
“I do it out of faith; there is no other reason,” he says of the extraordinary structure he began building in 1961 without any plans or sketches after failing in his ambition to become a priest. “It’s all in my head.”
Using recycled masonry and household trash such as bottles, cans and old tires, Gallego has single-handedly built an extensive complex that includes a cloister and a cupola 13 storeys high. It combines artistic touches from frescoes and stainedglass windows with rough edges where his vision remains unrealized.
There are no plans to complete the Cathedral of Faith, nor any guarantee that it will be maintained after Gallego, who is suffering from ill health, dies. He puts this down to an absence of funding beyond private donations. The town council says it has no money to spend on a structure that has no permit and could be unsafe.
“We cannot spend the people’s money on a private construction when we are having to close public buildings due to a lack of funding. Like many other municipalities, the crisis and the lack of building projects started in recent years has starved us of funds,” said local planning chief Encarnacion Martin.
She acknowledged that Gallego’s construction was “emblematic” and said the town had asked for assistance in making the building legal and safe. But, she added, the government, Madrid’s regional authorities and the college of architects have all refused to get involved.
“We don’t have the technical wherewithal to provide a solution,” Martin said. “Is the building stable? Is it safe? We have no way of knowing.”
If experts were to declare the building unsafe, Martin said it would have to be demolished.
A spokesman for Mejorada del Campo council said the church had also refused to get involved. The Cathedral of Faith has not been consecrated, although Gallego says he has held Christian ceremonies there. His most loyal follower, Angel Lopez, says that Gallego is resigned to dying without knowing what will happen to his life’s work.
“All he says about it is that it’s in God’s hands.”
Gallego says he has written a will leaving his creation to the local diocese of Alcala de Henares. But according to a spokesman, the diocese is not aware of this plan nor of any attempt by Gallego to seek assistance or advice from the church.
“It’s an amazing effort this man is making, but we at the moment have two churches in Mejorada that cover the needs of the church. It is up to civil institutions to ensure that the building is technically sound.”
Gallego says he decided to devote his life to the church after seeing attacks against religious institutions by communists when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936.
“With the profanation I saw, I would build the cathedral out of gold if I could,” he said.
He says he was expelled from the monastery where he was training after contracting tuberculosis and being considered a health risk. Ever since, he has sold off bit by bit all of the farmland and property he inherited from his father to pay for his work of devotion. He now lives in the unheated cathedral tended to by Lopez, his wife and their two children.
The authorities may not be knocking on Gallego’s door, but there is a constant trickle of tourists. Gallego says he does not have time for visitors who come to “gawk and flatter me,” but do nothing to help.