David G Bromley

The Cathedral

THE CATHEDRAL TIMELINE

1925 (September 20):  Justo Gallego Martinez was born in Mejorada Campo, Madrid, Spain.

1952:  Martinez entered a Trappist monastery, the Santa Maria de la Huerta Monastery in Soria Province.

1960:  Martinez left the monastery after contracting tuberculosis.

1961 (October 12):  Martinez began construction on his “Cathedral.”

1990s (Early):  Ángel López joined Martinez as his assistant.

2019:  Martinez’s health began to deteriorate seriously, probably from dementia.

2021 (November 9):  An engineering firm examined The Cathedral and pronounced it to be structurally sound.

2021 (November 28):  Justo Martinez died in Mejorada Campo, Madrid, Spain.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

Justo Gallego Martinez was born in Mejorada Campo, Madrid, Spain in 1925. [Image at right] His family was relatively prosperous and owned land outside of Madrid that he later inherited. Martinez reports being very close to his mother and having had a strong Catholic faith from an early age to which she contributed: She was the one that taught me the words of the Bible(Bremner 2022).  As a youth he witnessed the devastation created during the Spanish Civil war. The war also interrupted his education, and so his formal education was quite limited. Martinez was twenty-seven when he decided to become a novitiate in a Trappist monastery, the Santa Maria de la Huerta Monastery in Soria Province. After eight years in the monastery, Martinez contracted tuberculosis and was forced to exit the monastery. At the time he pledged that if he recovered his health he would build a shrine to honor Our Lady of Pillar. Amidst a period of personal depression and in a quandary about how to pursue his quest for a sacrificial life, he conceived the project of building a cathedral for God (Bremner 2022). In 1961, Martinez commenced what would become his lifetime project, constructing  what local residents began to call “The Cathedral,” and sometimes  “the cathedral of Justo” or “the cathedral from junk.”

DOCTRINES/RITUALS

Since Martinez never completed construction, his cathedral has not functioned as a church in any formal sense. [Image at right] His personal schedule has been highly ritualized for most of his sixty-year project as he rose at four AM every day and worked for ten hours gathering and processing construction materials. On Sundays he attended Mass. His dedication to his task was reinforced by the surrounding community’s treatment of him as an outcast until his project began to attract favorable attention from outside the community and he became a minor celebrity.

The site receives both pilgrims and tourists. Beyond The Cathedral Martinez himself is a source of fascination for visitors. Bremner (2022) reports that

Over the years, tens of thousands of people have come to visit the cathedral. They all want to see Justo – to touch him, to hear him speak, to understand him, his inspiration, his genius and his imagination. I saw old ladies kiss him, pilgrims accost him and fanatics pitch him with all manner of schemes for the future of the cathedral.

Visitors are encouraged to leave donations to support the construction project.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

The Cathedral is one of many visionary environments (with religious or spiritual themes) conceived and created by committed individuals (Roux 2004), such as Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens (Bromley 2016) and Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain (Bromley and Urlass 2016).

Like these other visionary projects, The Cathedral on Avenida Antoni Gaudí Street in Mejorada Campo was largely a singular creation (Keeley 2021). For most of the project’s sixty year history Martinez worked alone. For brief periods members of his family helped him and volunteers occasionally offered assistance. In the early 1990s, Ángel López Sánchez joined Martinez in his project and remained with him for the remainder of Martinez’s life. On rare occasions he hired an expert consusltant. However, Martinez was the central visionary, architect and builder throughout. He was also a fascinating, complex figure in his own right (Rogan n.d.):

Justo, in this world, is a dinosaur building a colossal monument to a god long since given up for dead. Nevertheless, his achievement is nothing short of miraculous. I am fascinated by the paradox of his character – whether he is madman or martyr? On the one hand, it has been an enterprise of total self-indulgence, on the other, total self-negation. To work with, especially for his helpers, he can be difficult, angry and harsh. His serene contentment in his work can switch to searing fury if anybody gets in the way of his project. But his determination is necessary precisely because he is a man who has succeeded in living outside of society pursuing an eccentric dream. His unswerving faith has enabled him to carry out a super-human task, revealing the raw power of religion in the hands of an exceptional individual.

Certainly the most distinctive and impressive feature of The Cathedral is that most of the construction materials were recycled (Rainsford 2010). Martinez gathered discarded, everyday materials from the surrounding neighborhood and nearby construction companies and factories. For example, columns in The Cathedral were construction from old petroleum barrels. Other materials used in the construction process included barrels, tires, ceramic shards, bricks, wire, and bits of colored glass.

Martinez was inspired by St. Peter’s basilica in Rome, the White House in the U.S., and various other churches and castles in Europe. What all of these other buildings modeled was curvature (Bremner 2022):

He preferred curves and circles – vaulted ceilings, domes, arches, rounded chapels, annular altars and spiral staircases. “God made all things round. He made the planets round. He made the earth round.”

The Cathedral incorporates twelve towers, twenty-eight cupolas minor chapels, cloisters, a sacristy, lodgings, a library, frescoes, and a crypt. [Image at right] The central dome in The Chapel itself took twenty years to complete. The crypt was built as the place that Martinez hoped to be interred. All of this construction took place without any formal architectural plans. Much of The Cathedral remained unfinished at the time of Martinez’s death in 2021.

ISSUES/CONTROVERSIES

The Cathedral project was beset by two major problems through Martinez’s life, it lacked funding and it lacked community and institutional support.

From the outset The Cathedral was largely a personal project and commitment. There never has been a stable source of funding. Martinez sold and rented land that he had inherited as one source of funding, but he incurred debts and was forced to live in The Cathedral beginning in the 1980s to reduce expenses (Bremner 2022). As Martinez persevered and the project grew, it began to attract national and international attention. A photograph of The Cathedral was displayed at an exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2003. An advertising campaign for the Aquarius soft drink produced by Coca-Cola brought attention in Spain in 2005.

The other major challenge to The Cathedral was its institutional standing. Martinez had hoped to bequeath The Cathedral to the Catholic Church so that it could operate as a local parish. However, there were no architectural plans or construction approval from the local planning commission, and so local church leaders had studiously ignored Martinez’s project (Rainsford 2020). This problem became more serious as Martinez’s health began to erode in 2019, construction remained unfinished, and legal status of the building was precarious. Just prior to Martinez’s death in 2021, transfer of responsibility for The Cathedral was arranged to the NGO, Messengers of Peace (Menageries de la Paz), [Image at right] headed by Father Ángel García Rodríguez. The organization pledged to complete the construction process. He then engaged a major engineering firm to assess the structural integrity of The Cathedral and, to the surprise of many observers, it was deemed structurally sound (Hughes 2021). Other support then began to materialize (One Man Cathedral website 2022). An architect offered to address the legal standing of the building. Municipal officials have shown interest in preservation by filing a petition to have The Cathedral designated as an asset of cultural interest (Bien de Interés Cultural). Cathedral supporters have also approached UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) with the goal of gaining the protected status of an item of cultural heritage for The Cathedral. The Catholic Church, however, has maintained its distance (Hughes 2021). The future of The Cathedral still remains somewhat unclear as Martinez had envisioned a link to the Catholic Church while Rodriguez has expressed a preference for a multi-faith space (Farrant 2021).

IMAGES

Image #1: Justo Gallego Martinez.
Image #2: The exterior of The Cathedral.
Image #3: An interior section of The Cathedral.
Image #4: Messengers of Peace (Menageries de la Paz) logo.

REFERENCES

Bremner, Matthew. 2022. “The man who built his own cathedral.” The Guardian, May 22. Accessed from https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2022/jun/13/the-man-who-built-his-own-cathedral-podcast on 10 June 2022.

Bromley, David G. 2016. Paradise Gardens.” World Religions and Spirituality Project. Accessed from https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/paradise-gardens/ on 10 June 2022.

Bromley, David G. and Stephanie Urlass. 2016. “Salvation Mountain.” World Religions and Spirituality Project. Accessed from https://wrldrels.org/2016/10/08/salvation-mountain/ on 10 June 2022.

Farrant, Theo. 2021. “Madrid monk’s 60-year ‘scrap cathedral’ project lives on after his death.” Euro News, November 30. Accessed from https://www.euronews.com/culture/2021/11/30/madrid-monk-s-60-year-scrap-cathedral-project-lives-on-after-his-death on 10 June 2022.

Hughes, Felicity. 2021. “The man behind Madrid’s most unusual cathedral, and the last-ditch effort to save it.” Lonely Planet, November 23. Accessed from the https://www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/cathedral-of-justo-gallego-spain on 10 June 2022.

Rainsford, Sarah. 2010.Madrid man builds cathedral from junk.” BBC, 30 December. Accessed from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12088560 on 10 June 2022.

One Man Cathedral website. 2022. “Save the Cathedral of Justo.” Accessed from  https://onemancathedral.com/ on 10 June 2022.

Rogan, James. n.d. “The Story.” The Madman and the Cathedral. Accessed from http://www.cathedraljusto.com/home.html on 10 June 2022.

Roux, Caroline. 2004. “Castle Magic.” The Guardian, January 7. Accessed from

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/jan/07/homes on 10 June 2022.

Publication Date:
15 June 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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