Daniel J. Ollero Madrid

Madrid

Updated Friday, February 9, 2024-00:04

  • Interview The father of the 'skateboard hero' who fights to canonize his son "so that his death is useful"

  • Leisure The bar in Vallecas that serves zebra croquettes, crocodile fingers or kangaroo fillets: "Before we sold python but people complained that it was very chewy"

The need in the absence of a father figure made

Pedro Gallego (47, Carabanchel)

leave his studies to help his mother financially. She got him his first job at a pig slaughterhouse, where he realized that working for others wasn't for him. There he began his career as an entrepreneur: first, selling sandwiches outside nightclubs and later, setting up a cocktail bar that led to his ruin. It was then, to get out of the hole, when he found a job as a well digger that inspired him to set up his own company with which he converts wastewater into clean energy. A path during which he has become

one of the men who best knows the underground of Madrid, where he has found bombs, skeletons, jewels and animals

.

After learning the trade, he decided to create

Serbis Pocería

, with which he has worked in the underworld of the Santiago Bernabéu, the Ritz Hotel, the Fuencarral Cercanías station and the Chamartín Railway Control Center. During all these years, Pedro has accumulated enough anecdotes to write a book. For example, not long ago,

he found an unexploded Civil War shell while working in the sewers of Puerta del Sol

... "Just a few days before the New Year's Eve Bells," he remembers.

However, this is not his strangest find. He has also come across a skeleton in the basement of Cascorro, a multitude of animal bones and authentic relics such as the catacombs built by the Arabs or the

famous labyrinth created in the times of King Philip V

, and which connects the Royal Palace with the area of the Cava Baja.

«When you start digging you find practically everything. In fact, when I started in this,

it was common to go down to the sewers with a bucket to store necklaces, earrings and jewelry

that we found.

In general, the only tenants of sewer networks are well diggers and animals. «

People believe that the most disgusting thing in the sewers are the rats, but for us they are pets that we even feed

. After all, when there are rats it means that there is no risk of release or gases, which are the main dangers we face," he says.

In fact, on some occasions, Pedro has had to pull his companions out by the hair after

they fainted due to the effects of the gases

. And he has also had to run to escape from the occasional tsunami of wastewater as soon as he unblocked one of the blockages that usually form in the pipes.

Apart from rats, what abounds in the sewers are

insects, "of all colors and sizes."

That “fauna,” he acknowledges, “does represent a real nuisance for the well workers.” As well as the conditions in which they often work: "In confined spaces where you can barely move and overwhelmed by bad odors and, sometimes, a lack of oxygen."

Pedro likes to brag about the "fine and surgical" work of Serbis Pocería in a

sector in which "sloppiness abounds."

For this reason, one of the moments that caused him the most pride was the day in which a client defined them as "the cosmetic surgeons of the pit." In recent years, he has also strived to

dignify the profession

by starring in an episode of

The Undercover Boss

or participating in the program

Órbita Laika

.

Now, Pedro and his plumbing company are looking towards the energy transition by adopting Therm-Liner, a technology developed by the German company Uhrig that

transforms dirty water into clean energy thanks to an energy utilization system

. "It is installed inside sewage networks and produces thermal energy," he says. In this way, Pedro aims to give a use to the 1,200 million cubic meters of water that we Spaniards throw every year through our toilets and drains.