“This is my wish for 2026”

“I succeeded three years sleeping in the Plaza Mayor in MadridFor months, he spent the night next to a fan store. From seven in the morning, the Local Police or the cleaning services would wake us up to evict us because the cafes and shops were starting to open…”

Although Other times he woke up because someone thought it was a joke to urinate on him.while he was lying on the ground, on boxes and blankets, so that the freezing cold of Madrid nights would not take him away.

“If I went back to the street it would be like dying” says Francisco (Madrid, 1967) in an interview with EL ESPAÑOL, without burning words and with a double objective. The first: to launch an appeal to find his sister, Ana María Casanova Caño, 54, with whom he has lost contact. “My wish for 2026 is to find the only member of my family that I have left. “

The second: to give visibility to all the people condemned to live on the streets, begging for alms to survive, the people who have a story behind them, the men and women who were not born in a portal and who after Christmas will continue to need the help of non-profit organizations like the Luz Casanova Foundation – whose projects require donations -.

The Cáritas FOESSA 2025 report corroborates that Christmas solidarity is not enough for the 4.3 million people experiencing serious social exclusion in our countryof which a third are minors, due to the main factors of exclusion: precarious employment and access to housing.

-How did you lose contact with your sister?

– François: My cell phone was stolen while I was living on the streets and I can’t remember the phone number because I’m dizzy with memory problems from all the drugs I was doing. My sister moved from Alicante to Barcelona after her divorce and I maintained telephone contact with her. But I lost his number and my entire contact book when they confiscated my phone. I haven’t heard from her in three years.

So simple and so tragic at the same time. SO, Paco asks for citizen “collaboration” to find clues this allows him to reconnect with his sister because he does not know where Ana lives in Barcelona and does not have photos to show in this report, because they took his cell phone while he was homeless.

Anyone who can provide interesting information about Ana María Casanova Caño, 54 years old, You can contact the Luz Casanova Foundation and the Abad Arija Pension in Madrid. where Paco shares a room with José Luis Dorado, whom he calls “brother-in-law”, and with whom he is united by a bond stronger than blood: having suffered the trials of homelessness.

-How did you end up living on the street?

– François: I consumed 10 grams of base per day.

Drugs destroyed the life of this man who served in the army, worked in construction or as a deliveryman. “He used heroin and cocaine when he was in his 20s.“, summarizing his beginnings as a drug addict, in the 80s, a time when many quinqui films depicted the marginality, criminality and drug addiction of the Spain of the Transition that Paco experienced first hand.

“For five years I was a military policeman inside La Rubia Barracks in Valladolid and at the San Quentin barracks in Madrid until they retired me due to AIDS: I contracted it from using heroin. » This is where Sergeant Casanova’s career ended. “He left me a pension of 715 euros. » The horse also “ruined” his marriage to a Moroccan woman.

“We were married for four years.” So he returned to his mother, Oliva, and checked himself into a rehab center. “My mother had terminal cancer colon and I took care of her.

The reunion ended disastrously for his mother, and Francisco says things didn’t improve at home because his brother, Juan Antonio, had a brain tumor. “I took care of my brother, but I could not bear all the expenses with a pension of 715 euros: food, electricity, water, community expenses…”. “I ended up selling the apartment“.

-What did you do after you sold your mother’s house?

– François: I sold the apartment for 120,000 euros and shared the money with my brothers. Each of us played for 40,000 euros. My brother Juan Antonio settled in a house, paying several months in advance to spend his illness there, my sister kept her share in Alicante and I settled in the apartment of a drug addict in Villaverde Alto because in the end, the goat goes to the mountains.

So much so that he spent 40,000 euros on his return to the bad life, consume basucos daily: a mixture of cocaine paste with other drugs, to escape his mother’s death by destroying her brain. “In 2022, my brother died of cancer.” “After his funeral, I lost contact with my sister Ana, because my cell phone was stolen.”

Francisco’s life finally hit rock bottom when he spent the first night of many outside, with cardboard for a mattress, depending on the charity of others to eat and ending a health already punished by drugs because he drank a carton of strong wine, to relieve the cold and hunger.

“Am HIV positive: I had a heart problem, pulmonary emphysema and kidney stones.“Fortunately, the Luz Casanova Foundation crossed their path: born from the Social Work of the Apostolic Women of the Heart of Jesus.

“At the foundation they fed me, I could clean myself…», as Paco lists it, as his roommate at the Pension Abad Arija in Madrid affectionately calls him: his “brother-in-law” José Luis. In Luz Casanova, this former soldier regained the dignity that the street steals daily from 33,758 people in our country, who have to resort to care centers managed by an NGO -according to an INE study-.

The FLuz Casanova Foundation It bears the name of the aristocrat who founded the Congregation of the Apostolic Ladies of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1924.to serve the most needy in Madrid.

This heritage remains intact, focusing its work on attention to women victims of gender violence and fight for the social inclusion of people experiencing homelessness to those they welcome daily, in a day center, offering them breakfast, meals, laundry service, showers, emergency wardrobe or psychological care.

“The foundation took me off the street, they found me a room in the pension that I share with my ‘brother-in-law’ José Luis, who was also homeless,” insists Paco, “grateful” for the help he received. “I haven’t touched drugs in years.“In fact, this former soldier became a Luz Casanova volunteer: “I dedicate myself to food distribution, I deliver basic necessities to the apartments of people with reduced mobility…”.

– What are you asking for the new year 2026?

– François: Reconnect with my sister Ana because I no longer have a family. This is my wish for 2026. They stole everything from me in the street. They took my phone up to seven times; I don’t have a photo of my parents, nor my brothers, nor my military police card. I lost everything, everything, everything…