Spain – ex-monk single-handedly building church from waste

In Mejorada del Campo, Spain – Justo Gallego has been building what he calls a cathedral, single-handedly, for the last 40 years. Huddled in two old coats by a bonfire in the nave, his face grubby and his cheeks hollow, the 78-year-old former monk says the end is in sight.



“My dream is being fulfilled,” Gallego told Reuters. He was surrounded by 1,000 round plastic tubs, donated by the local baker and set to be recycled as molds for the vaulting. The building measures 115 feet at its highest point but when finished will reach 180 feet, rivaling the Tower of Pisa, Gallego says. For now, blue poles poke from the sturdy if uneven-looking structure, pointing to its final size. Gallego wants his windows filled with stained glass but is looking to do it on the cheap, using two tons of glass that arrived one day from some German tourists.



Gallego experiments with how to make his own stained glass. In one example, he has painted a sun and rainbow on a clear window pane. While he says the end is in sight, Gallego is unsure what church authorities — due to inherit the building — will do. The structure lacks any permits from planning authorities. “I am very ambitious.” He calls the building a cathedral, although authorities point out that the diocese already has one and there is not room for two.



Gallego was a monk for eight years but was thrown out when he caught tuberculosis, for fear of contagion. He started selling some stretches of the land he inherited in order to buy materials. Locals compare him to Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi, creator of Barcelona’s fantastical and unfinished Sagrada Familia church, in part because in Gaudi’s final days he was mistaken for a tramp. The comparison is helped by the church’s address: number 10 Antoni Gaudi Street. But the former monk, who now lives with his sister, rejects the comparison. “I’ve got no qualification, he was qualified … I just do it naturally, I like it,” he says.



The walls and staircases are made of broken bricks — gleaned from daily predawn trips to the brick factory — roughly pasted together with cement. Used bicycle tires and recycled scraps also form the church’s building blocks. The floors and stairs are uneven and the roof leaks, with the drips running into three bath-sized tubs in the nave. But Gallego sees the day when mass will be held in his church, and has collected about 100 tiny children’s chairs for the congregation.



“Maybe they could use them for mass,” Gallego said, grinning an almost toothless smile. Miguel Valero, planning councilor for this town of 20,000 people, said he was trying to work out what to do with the illegal cathedral after Gallego’s death.



“It’s a symbol of Mejorada,” he said. “We’re going to try to come to some arrangement with the diocese.”