[A man in his twenties, he has a preppy look. Very eloquent and passionate, he talks with his hands]
Julian Pedrales was a Spanish architect, back in the eighteenth century.
The son of a peasant, he was destined to follow his father’s destiny… if it weren’t because his drawing skills convinced some local officials to patron him.
After finishing his studies at the Academy, he became an apprentice, then an assistant to a famous architect… whose work Julian would finish without getting credited for it.
Judging by his meager accomplishments, you’d think he wasn’t very ambitious. But that’s not true. He was… to a fault.
He was obsessed with building a massive cathedral, one with the biggest nave and the tallest steeple in Europe.
For over thirty years, he used his own money to travel to every court, to hustle for the favor of nobles and churchmen…
Unfortunately, the enormity of his project –so expensive, so technically challenging– discouraged anyone but Julian to attempt it.
Toward the end of his life, he retired to a small patch of land near his hometown. He built himself a house there, nothing too fancy…
He also built a small chapel on a hill nearby. It barely took him three months to complete it.
I visited the chapel years ago. It was already getting dark when I reached it. The façade was unassuming but beautiful in its simplicity.
To my surprise, there were some lit candles inside, the light reflecting on the stone walls, making it look like a shiny womb, warm and inviting.
I walked inside… sat on a bench. The place was tiny; the walls, bared…
I felt closer to god. And I’m not religious…
There, I realized that, occasionally, people triumph despite their own ambitions.
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Copyright Abel Gonzalez 2017
