In December, the cold hits Madrid. It is also filled with water. It is very difficult to live in the cold and humidity. And this happens a few kilometers from the center. A few meters from Christmas. Father Agustín Rodríguez Teso is 55 years old and has a way of … a walk that seems to say he’s in no hurry, even though he’s always late for something. Since 2007 he has lived and worked in Cañada Real, in sector six, the most dubious, the most dangerous; that place that almost no one wants to talk about except when it comes to justifying a budget or filling out a report that no one will read. There, among the slums, dirty streets and a power line that goes down like an old excuse, nearly 3,000 children are growing up without what others call a future. And these children have a father, a mother, uncles or grandparents. Because in La Cañada Real, we don’t know how to distinguish anything. They are all alike in something: in their misery.
Father Agustín is parish priest of Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A church that is neither pretty nor necessary. It is a building that seems to resist because it has no other choice. Surrounded by nothing. Serving everyone. Inside, Father Agustín distributes food. Open the showers for drug addicts. He organizes a dining room where the tables limp and conversations are often confused with threats. In the project they call “Encounters with Dignity,” they try to remind them – and themselves – that dignity is not a privilege but a human condition. It looks like luxury there. But it has been going on for almost twenty years, bringing a little light in the midst of the darkness. When they leave him.
Every Tuesday, a mother asks for milk for her children. He has three. The little one is not even four years old and has had a cold since last winter. That Tuesday, Father Agustín found milk. The other days no. In La Cañada, life is like this: what is missing today may also be missing tomorrow. The children learn this too soon and Madrid continues to spin as the whole street lights up, except for his hope.
He is the priest of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, a church that is neither pretty nor necessary. It is a building that seems to resist because it has no other choice
When they managed to open the dental clinic with the College of Dentists of Madrid, some said it was good news. It was. But at La Cañada Real, the good news is like the birds: they arrive, they circle twice and we don’t know if they will come back the following year. However, the clinic is there, behind the parish. They repair teeth with more patience than resources. Every tooth saved is a small victory, but in this business, small victories matter more than any political speech. Father Agustín insists on education. He says it without enthusiasm, almost voiceless, like someone repeating a mantra so as not to forget his home address. Organizes academic support, leisure activities, monitoring of minors. Sometimes it feels like you’re trying to draw water from a dry well. Or a hundred dry wells. And yet, it continues.
Because the reality is this: thousands of people live in Cañada Real surrounded by poverty, power cuts, cold in winter and unbearable heat in summer. Many sleep with coats. They study – when they can – with flashlights. Sometimes when talking about them, the word “vulnerable” is used, as if that word is enough to cover the distance between what they should have and what they actually have. But that’s not the case. This doesn’t cover anything. Father Agustín knows this. He also knows that many people prefer to look away. Not because of evil, he says, but because the misery of others is an uncomfortable mirror: it shows what we do not want to see of ourselves. That’s why he stays. Distribute food. Open the church. Accompany the children. Walk through streets full of holes that the city prefers to forget. He does small things: brief gestures, barely perceptible, but which sustain life in a place where nothing is guaranteed. No one knows if what they are doing is enough. But that’s how it is. And, in Cañada Real, what exists is usually the only thing left. For now, what there is is a priest who honors the word priesthood. A guy, a good man, who makes sure that Madrid isn’t such a scoundrel that we forget that places like this exist. A real tiger serving those who have less. Or those who simply have nothing.
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