Spanish 'cathedral' builder Justo Gallego has passed away

The "Justo Cathedral", which is not recognised as a place of worship by the religious authorities, is built on a vacant lot in Mejorada del Campo, a town of 23,000 inhabitants, located 20 kilometres east of Madrid's city centre. Today the cathedral has a surface area of 4,700m², a central nave of 50 metres long and 20 metres wide, a height of 35 metres and twelve Gothic or Byzantine style towers.

Gallego spent more than half his life on it, using broken bricks, paint cans or tin cans and advancing metre by metre, almost single-handedly without plans or permission. Though visitors nowadays come in droves to marvel at the building, the authorities have studiously ignored its existence, with neither the town council of Mejorada del Campo nor the Catholic Church wanting to take responsibility for it, lonely planet writes.

Aesthetic

Visiting the site in 2009 after receiving the Princess of Asturias award, the famous British architect Norman Foster told him: "You should have been awarded this prize," engineer and architect Juan Carlos Arroyo said a reporter from AFP news agency according to France24. Arroyo's company, Calter Ingeniería, is studying the solidity of the construction.

"The structure has withstood major weather events throughout its construction," Arroyo says, expressing confidence that it will require "only minor surgery". It is surprising, given the materials used. "Today recycling is fashionable, but (Justo) used it 60 years ago when nobody was talking about it" and "he created an aesthetic, a beautiful aesthetic".

Social centre

Too weak to work in recent years -he took to his bed over a year ago- Justo handed over his life's work to the Messengers of Peace charity of Father Angel López (52), a well-known and media-savvy cleric in Spain, who will complete the building.

"He's a marvellous person; he loves to talk to people, to explain everything; a wonderful person who loves Christ", Father Angel said before Gallego's death. Lopez has spent the last 24 years beside his mentor, learning the construction techniques Gallego developed without any formal training.

Father Angel would like the cathedral in Justo to be open to all faiths and people in need. "I dare to say that there are too many cathedrals and too many churches, and sometimes we need them to be full," he says in front of the altar. "It will not be a cathedral as such but a social centre where people can come to pray" or if they "have difficulties".

Monk

Born in 1925 in Mejorada del Campo, into a farming family, Justo Gallego Martínez began the project in 1961 after tuberculosis forced him to leave an order of Trappist monks. While struggling with his condition, Gallego prayed to the Virgin Mary, promising to build a cathedral if she saved him. He recovered and immediately got to work on land he inherited from his family without construction plans and training.

The cathedral was dedicated to the "Virgin of the Pillar". Salient detail: the building is in the street of Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926), builder of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, which was unfinished at the time of his death and is still not finished.

He was 36 at the time and has never stopped since. "The way is made by walking" was one of his stubborn phrases, German Domradio.de writes. From six in the morning until six in the evening, he was in his church. He had to rely solely on donations. He got the stones as rejects from a nearby brickyard; filled rain gutters became steps, oil drums and plastic canisters became moulds for columns or concrete kerbs. He could even use old perimeter advertising from Real Madrid's Bernabeu stadium as a base or support material.

Talking

According to Domradio, the master-builder did not like to talk. "Throw something in the box," he grumbled at visitors when they approached him and might interrupt him in his work. Talking - people always wanted to speak. Yet he says what he has to say with what he designs, paints, builds, Don Justo repeated for many years.

Time and again, the biblical Pauline word "We are fools for Christ's sake" has led people to a life that radically closes itself off to social conventions. Justo Gallego Martinez was almost certainly one of them.