Disclaimer: This article was published in 2023. Some information may no longer be current.
Spaniard Justo Gallego Martinez (1925–2021) spent his entire life building a cathedral and he did it on his own. But this enigmatic man—who gained renown as “God’s crazy bricklayer”—from Mejorada del Campo, a small town close to Madrid, was not a lofty architect.
Rather, Don Justo (his honorific name) was raised in a humble, devout farming family, and ever since he was a very young boy, he had a deep faith in God. His cathedral is not made of gold and costly stone but scrap and recycled materials that he collected himself. When he started building his cathedral in 1961, the word on the street was that he was crazy; his typical day, throughout the next six decades began at 3.30 a.m.
“I have never had any training in the building profession. ... I was inspired by books about cathedrals, castles and other religious buildings and they gave birth to my own work. But my principle source of illumination and inspiration has always been the Word of Christ,” he said in his short biographical account for the film, The Madman and the Cathedral.
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Marlene Vicente/Shutterstock
phatymak's studio/Shutterstock
Don Justo’s formal education was disrupted by the Spanish Civil War; he was a 10-year-old at the time and witnessed communist fighters shooting priests. After spending eight years living in a monastery, he fell ill with tuberculosis and was forced to leave to prevent infecting others.
“I came back to Mejorada devastated by this setback to my first attempt at a spiritual life,” he wrote. “So I decided to build, on farmland belonging to my family, an offering to God. Little by little, the building was erected, spending my family inheritance to keep it going. There were never any construction plans or official permission.”
Bit by bit Don Justo got to work on his vision in the nondescript Madrid suburb. Mostly, his materials consisted of concrete, broken brick, and colored glass, with old petrol drums used for the columns.
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RA fotografia/Shutterstock
RA fotografia/Shutterstock
Vivvi Smak/Shutterstock
Vivvi Smak/Shutterstock
Throughout the project, which eventually spanned almost 60 years and resulted in a total built-up area of 86,000 square feet, a crane was never deployed. The cathedral includes a 120-foot dome (modeled on St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City), a huge crypt, chapels, cloisters, and a library.
Justo was 96 when he died alone, in his cathedral, following a year of ill health. The gigantic project was left unfinished, but Justo had left it to a charity run by a priest, Messengers of Peace, that vowed to complete his life’s work, according to Church Times.
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Hernan J. Martin/Shutterstock
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Five years before his passing, talking to Great Big Story, Justo had stressed that his motivation for creating his vision every day was devotion and nothing else. He knew, he said, that he would never see it finished while he was alive.
“I don’t want anything material, any money. So I’ve gotten rid of everything, even my house. It’s impossible that I finish this cathedral in my lifetime because there’s still so much to do,” he told Great Big Story. “I hope that after I die this cathedral … well, I’m leaving it to the divine hand. I don’t know how far it will go. It’s better that God take charge.”
phatymak's studio/Shutterstock
Vivvi Smak/Shutterstock
Vivvi Smak/Shutterstock
Hernan J. Martin/Shutterstock
RA fotografia/Shutterstock
Justo dedicated his cathedral to the Virgin Mary and named it Nuestra Señora del Pilar, though it was never officially authorized nor recognized as a sacral object by Spain’s predominant Roman Catholic Church, according to the Church Times.
But the city council of Mejorada del Campo, in a statement published at the start of three days of public mourning for the builder, said: “The spirit of his work will remain eternally in the hearts of those who admired this cathedral—a work of genius built on lifelong immovable qualities of faith, perseverance, and dedication.”
According to Atlas Obscura, Don Justo once said that if he got a chance again to build the cathedral, he’d “build it twice as big.”
Anna Mason is a writer based in England. She majored in literature and specializes in human interest, travel, lifestyle and content marketing. Anna enjoys storytelling, adventures, the Balearic sunshine and the Yorkshire rain.
