Sitting in a chair under an umbrella in a camisole / with the dog nibbling on my slipper / burping a tortilla and buttered toast / aiming a rifle without a scope at the horizon
Speakers spit beef on Inhabitant a Jay Balvin behind the bar of the Garden Club, a city beach bar in Fuentebella, a working-class neighborhood in the Madrid city of Parla. A man wearing a red Lacoste T-shirt, known among his neighbors for maintaining the pool, tells us that there we can find I’m squatting dubbed by TVs as ‘The Beast’an infamous nickname that no one knows how it came about.
The largest group of parishioners is that of six children, seated at the back of the terrace, between some unwashed walls decorated with classical paintings. They smoke tobacco and marijuana, drink beer, eat frozen pizzas and patatas bravas, and share their empty August mornings between Instagram and Tik Tok. They are driven by the natural charisma of one of them: John Joseph Ballesta“El Bola”, a nice guy loved by his neighbors, who at 35 lives in a species spin-off of the two emblematic films of Spanish cinema in which he starred as a child: the one that eventually christened him and 7 virgins (Alberto Rodriguez, 2005)
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Ballesta, who combines his profession as an actor with the modest and rooted life he has always had, has been in the news these weeks for his friendship with I’m squatting. “El Bola” is true to his codes and publicly acknowledges his friend, does not deny it, although it distinguishes itself from his criminal activities: breaking into all the empty premises in the neighborhood to stay and organize parties and attract the attention of the police to get to prison. The reason for his media fame. Two stints in jail, between August 2014 and June 2018, and another of several months in 2019, support a criminal history of retail, robbery and police run-ins.
the character of Galfon Gael Telemanu only explained when he takes to the stage, at the Garden Club, after 1pm on Thursday. Barefoot, riding a scooter, with a bundle in which he drags his life, pursued by a couple of the National Police. “We stop you and you don’t stop, you go crazy with the scooter and you missed a stop. If we turn on your siren and pull you over, you pull over“, reproaches an Andalusian agent.
The fact that the policemen come with gloves activates the instinct of “El Bola” who senses the opportunity to take away his detained friend. Plain print. Then he acts as a makeshift lawyer, expressing his prestige with affabilitytrying to keep the trendy quinky in the neighborhood and urging him to apologize so he wouldn’t end up “rightfully” in the sack. “Friends are friends and what you do is your problem”I would synthesize a few days ago in the Public mirror.
A decade of street life
At 30 years old, Gael has been living voluntarily on the streets for 10 years, struggling with a family that lives in the same habitat that is teeming. He says he lives alone and will die alone. That morning, he asked his mother for his passport so that he would not be arrested when they asked him to identify himself, and he refused. “Sleep anywhere, like El Postilla, the one in lives poor“, one of his friends explains about the character suffering from narcolepsy in the web series. “Sometimes he goes two days without eating,” says another.
He emigrated to Parla with his family, mother and brothers, from Republic of the Congo in 2001. He soon bonded with the neighborhood kids, amid the jungle of exposed bricks, just a year after one of them won a Goya in the Newcomer category for Spanish film translator of the year. “What did Juanjo Ballesta do in The ball (Achero Mañas, 2001) is beyond praise”writes the film critic Carlos Boyero for his role.
Both attended CEIP Seneca, the district’s public school. Ballesta, only 12 years old and at the height of his precocious career, continued his education through private lessons. Gael barely made it to year 3 of ESO. Now his only concern is partying, drinking Coronita, he says, earning a few euros selling junk and fueling the notoriety gained from his daily clashes with the police. Shootouts that he shares daily on his social networks.
He is an ungovernable man obsessed with the hypothetical permanent crusade the state is waging against him. “I have had enemies since I arrived in Spain, not because I am different, but for having other ideals and thoughts“, he sacrificed himself on television. “He’s a revolutionary,” jokes one of his friends.
“You can’t make us look for you through Parla.” We know each other and I have never misbehaved with you, then you complain – one of the policemen tries to sympathize.
– I don’t like blue and red, I feel scared, I have a bad experience – Gael nurtures leitmotif on which he built his life.
His friends, however, speak of him as a generous man, to whom they must provide food and some prosperity. “He shares everything he has. If you give him something, he gives it to others,” he says. Oscar Jr. He gives the reporter a t-shirt from his rapper cousin, Chache Blackwhere you can read the fucking black of the school.
Everyone emphasizes that he never did anyone, that he is a good person. Also V., the man who maintains the pool, who rented it to him five years ago for a few weeks. The nickname of the “Beast” is not explained: he measures just over 160 centimeters, his legs are burned after falling into a vat of acid and the body tattooed with inspirational phrases. On the chest a large eye, hardly noticeable in a very black body.
Fire in Bankya
“El Frances”, as he calls himself on his social networks, started making headlines in the press and on the morning after dawn on August 1, when the old Bankia office, which squatting came out burning. Neighbors had to put out the fire with buckets. “You can mess up very badly”, estimates a nearby business owner. Many of the neighbors found out about what happened on television, others do not know about Gael’s existence. His strange version is that the neighbors themselves started the fire in the room, now covered with sheet metal.
Gael walked over to the gym area in the old branch. Also recurring celebrations that drove the neighbors crazy. His utter distaste for the law led one commentator to say that he should be “either in a mental hospital or in jail.” A diagnosis that he himself did not deny.
“We don’t hunt rats with a bow here”
“The wolf where he lives does no harm”, absolves V. of the crime in Parla Este, which he assures is an intoxicating Fuentebella, a place where “they can steal even your families” when night falls. He talks about the deterioration of the neighborhood in recent years, that older people rarely go out, that “there are more nationalities than in the UN”, about the increase in drug use and that boys compare themselves, he points out that this is called a WhatsApp group , with the New York borough of the Bronx.
But everyone is talking about “El Bola”, the boy who was paid a million pesetas to make a film when he was 11 years old. “If it was Euros, he’d buy you and your sister a villa”tells the shape of a character that is impossible to separate from this film for the generations. “We don’t hunt rats with a bow here, we buy meat from Mercadona,” he told a gang member who reprimanded him a few days ago. One of the passengers fell asleep in the back of the car. This afternoon, Juan Jose Ballesta will be fishing for carp with his son Juanhito in the nearby marsh, his favorite hobby. Sometimes he takes Gael with him. El Bola’s Volkswagen accelerates and leaves Parla railway station.
You’re already on the street, the neighborhood taunts you, you look back (Hayes, “7 Virgins”)