Virtual Refectory: Cathedral of Faith

Or a bunch of cr*p...?

A special tale for you today, Ecclesiasticals—and one of my personal favourites. Enjoy!

The year is 2022. In the small town of Mejorada del Campo, on the outskirts of Madrid, a colossal basilica silently emerges from its unusual setting. Construction materials litter the floor. But there is no ostentatious gilding or carved sculpture, no striated or feathered marble work, nor heaped ashlar blocks. Instead, there are piles of scrap and precarious unfinished handrails, while some levels of the building are completely open, and if you should slip over, you will fall more than twenty metres. Reinforced steel sticks out ready to snag you. Petrol drums, empty paint cans and tractor tyres embrace colossal makeshift pillars, arches and domes. There are no towering cranes, no cement mixers, nor even any real scaffolding – nor certainly any planning permissions ever granted. In fact, the work yard houses no machinery of any kind – unless an improvised hoist cobbled together from an old bicycle counts.