Catedral de Justo

The vow

Gallego entered the Trappist monastery of Santa María de Huerta in Soria and left in 1961 after contracting tuberculosis. He had promised that if he recovered he would build a church to Our Lady of the Pillar. He started on family land in Mejorada del Campo on October 12, the feast of the Pilar, and did not stop.

How it was built

Almost nothing was bought. Bricks came from a nearby factory's rejects. Columns were cast inside used oil drums. Bicycle wheels served as pulleys. There were never any plans on paper; he carried the building in his head and revised it as he went, with help from two nephews and whoever turned up.

What stands is roughly 4,700 square meters of it: a dome 35 meters high, 12 towers, 28 smaller domes, and more than 2,000 pieces of stained glass. The proportions are borrowed from buildings he had seen in books, and the structure is unfinished in every direction at once.

Standing

The building has never held a construction licence, and it has never been consecrated. No diocese recognizes it as a cathedral; the name is what everyone calls it.

In 2005 Gallego signed it over to Mensajeros de la Paz, the charity run by Padre Ángel, which took the site on after his death. In September 2025 the organization confirmed it would be open to people of any religion and described it as a social and cultural center rather than a church, with an interreligious prayer room in an annex that is not in regular use.

Structural studies have been completed. The licence is still pending.

Open daily, 11am to 7pm. There is no admission charge, and donations are collected inside.

It is as much a construction site as a building: unfinished surfaces, uneven floors, exposed structure, and stairs without rails in places. Upper levels are not always open, and ordinary care is worth taking on the way round.

Most visitors spend about 30 to 45 minutes. It stands in a residential part of Mejorada del Campo, east of central Madrid, and is visible from several streets away because nothing else near it is that tall.