From drugs to God: the inexhaustible resilience of Roberto, the man who rose 100 times

He never met his father. His mother practiced prostitution. His stepfather and his older brother abused his sister, who became pregnant at age 13. Four of the six brothers met the drug. At 14 he met her. At 16 he got his first peak of heroin. He was 10 years stealing and trafficking. He entered prison to serve five years. He has had two severe depressions. Attempted to kill several times with a syringe. He has slept in cars. He has been unemployed three times. And yet ...

Don Roberto Alcalá Berges is 54 years old and has been married to 20 with a lawyer named Pilar, has a 16-year-old daughter in permanent foster care , has worked as a bricklayer and waiter, a telemarketer and in security, selling books at home, dispatching buns, distributing advertising and mailboxing it. Your nth job in telephone banking will begin shortly. It gets up to daily masses . Nail the paellas.

In 1989, a 28-kilo zombie entered Carabanchel prison. Thirty years later, the good vibes of a Buddha of more than 100.

If you ever think you are in the absolute shit forever, go back to the beginning of this text.

Cuni (nicknamed by Laurie Cunningham , a black Real Madrid striker) speaks: «My mother came from the town to Madrid to serve in a house and soon began prostitution. He worked 16 and 18 hours a day and was having children with different uncles. I say that I am the fruit of a quick dust [smiles]. I never met my father, but she was a very good mother . We lived around in charge of family members or a lady who took care of us. My mother took care of everything. He never stopped going to see us. The truth is that his pimp was his six children ... Until he met a man and brought us all together again when I was seven years old ».

My sister, pregnant with 13 years

Don Roberto Alcalá Berges gets to study for a while each day and then in the afternoon he goes without fail to his Galapagar church. There will be those who judge him for it without knowing him . Or even for wearing a Pedro del Hierro polo. They are the same ones who would have condemned him when he was almost naked.

«Nothing justifies what I did next, nothing. But in that house there were Dantesque things. Flying dishes, stepfather beatings ... My sister became pregnant at 13 years old. She and my older brother abused her. When my mother found out everything, I was too old to go back to the street ... I slept with a knife under the pillow . She decided to shut up, but in exchange the stepfather had to keep us. That's why I didn't want to go home and I was going around. I repeat that I don't justify drugs. Because I have known childhoods worse than mine and that did not end up like me. But my story is that.

Don Roberto Alcalá Berges walks slowly on a wooden cane. I should do regimen . And more exercise. And leave the salt. Bla bla bla. This weekend -hala, to take for sack, informs- will make a rice to friends.

From hashish to 'horse'

The days of school absenteeism come and try everything: the 14 years of hashish, LSD and Centramine . It's the 80's and something's going to happen here. You have shorts and they look for you to kill you.

"I already put coca and heroin in my vein," says Cuni. «Shot by Malasaña and the Plaza de Dos de Mayo. If they put me in front of a bucket full of coca and a roll of silver paper, I would have put it all in. My mother caught me by pricking me. He stole a lot of ATM, with a razor in his neck , pushing when they were going to enter. Also at night, entering sites and devaluing slots. Ten years I was stealing. They never caught me for that. But for trafficking ».

Don Roberto Alcalá Berges has not consumed anything at all since 1990, at least a few rods on weekends and with a cover if possible. After mass. He says that God has not allowed anything to happen to him , that thanks to God they did not make a tie some Colombians who took a kilo of coca. He would like to tell us about the gospel according to someone, but we return with those demons.

"I didn't even think about eating"

«I lived to wear. I didn't think about eating. If I had 1,500 pesetas, the first thing was to wear, ”Cuni continues. “Maybe I didn't have to put myself with that, but at least it took away my pain. Then comes the hole: do not clean yourself, do not take care of yourself, just get in. I got to sleep for seven months in a car without washing myself ; It smelled like dead dog. I got 12 causes, all for traffic. When I first entered it was 1989. It's been 30 years. 30. Buf ».

Don Roberto Alcalá Berges is a golden peak . For what he speaks. But more for what it bleeds.

Cuni discovers a new meaning: “In the end I was so destroyed that I wanted to get out of the way. I saw death there. And you felt like it. I had several attempts to peak gold: put two grams in a peak, did not take the drug in the shot. And nothing ... There was always someone who finally took me to the hospital and saved me ».

Golden peak is silent.

Then talk about God.

There is a scene he does not forget about life imprisonment in which Tim Robbins, he says, escapes from the semi-submerged prison in endless sewers overflowing with excrement. "That was my effort, to do the same: escape the shit, mine."

"That's what my son is going to be"

When he was released from prison, five years had passed. One day in 1993 he crossed his mother, who was walking with a friend. She said: "Look, your son . " The mother replied: "That's what my son is going to be." «She said it to be heard. Then he recognized me. I wanted him to react. And I reacted ».

At this point, Cuni has already passed through a detoxification center , through the San Isidro shelter and through a reintegration floor, has seen dozens of friends die with AIDS, has met a criminal law professor who welcomes people like that in his house. Create His name is Alcalá Berges, Roberto. And he is about to have a divine appearance.

«I met Pilar on the Camino de Santiago in 1996. We called back and began to leave. The first thing I did was tell him that I had HIV . And the rest of this story ».

A girl of Cameroonian origin

Resilience The wedding for the church was in 1999. The permanent foster care of that girl of Cameroonian origin who also did not know her father was in 2003. A teenage daughter who lost a course due to anorexia , has been influenced , already receives some income for it and has almost 20,000 followers on Instagram. We see the photos you have posted on your account. How time goes by, he says.

«I had been in gymnastics since I was a child. And I realize that happiness was that. Take a walk, eat an ice cream at the Retiro , take her to train ... That lot of things you get lost as soon as you blink ».

The last depression fell on him last year like an old sentence he had to pay. He doesn't even know that sadness . But he did the usual. There are times when you have to spend the monkey even if you have not tried it for 30 years.

-I have a legal friend named María Naredo who tells me that it doesn't matter how many times you fall, but every time you do it you get up .

-Do you love yourself?

-Mallet. Because there are places that you can only leave by yourself. They can advise you, help you, keep you company ... But you only get out of those wells.

Mother. The raped sister. The plunger of the blood-stained syringe. A thick white slime in the mouth, remember. The smell of a dead dog . The shit of Tim Robbins. 1989-2019.

30 years ago, everyone would have stepped away. Today, in a wagon on Avenida de América, at about half past four in the afternoon, the Cuni gives the seat to a man named Don Roberto Alcalá Berges.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project