The first time José Luis Campo arrived in the City of Boys he was shocked. I was 14 years old and He was received by a group of boys of the same age.. He had arrived there with the intention of studying, just as Father Silva had told him. “I worked washing dishes in restaurants in Ourense. There I met the priest, who encouraged me to enroll in a vocational training course that he was going to give,” he tells 20 minutes. What he did not know is that this nation ruled by children I was going to teach him much more than a simple trade.
Campo was born in 1947 in Parada do Sil, a small municipality in rural Galicia marked by the post-war period. His family, like many others, was forced to emigrate, and was left in the care of relatives. “We children were not abandoned, but we didn’t have many opportunities“he explains. The City of Boys, a project that was born from the dream of a young seminarian at the end of the 1950s, was one of the few options to which minors in marginal situations could aspire.
Defining the City of Boys is complicated. An orphanage? A reform school? A sect? A nation? The idea of Jesús Silva, a Jesuit priest born in Ourense in 1933, was to create a place where young people of any race, religion and social condition could live. were dissatisfied with the world. To do this, he was inspired by the story of Edward Flanagan and Boys Town in Nebraska at the beginning of the 20th century. This utopia took shape in his mother’s house in 1956 and moved to Benposta in 1963. Its closure, in the early 2000s, meant that its history was forgotten, until now, when Prime Video has recovered it through a documentary series that premiered this November 22. In their more than six decades of experience, they spent about 50,000 children from all over the world.
An autarchy with child leaders
Campo entered this nation in 1962 and became one of the first Benposta ‘boys’. “Father Silva’s approach was self-management. He didn’t want to depend on public charity or anyone,” he remembers. And so it was. They sold newspapers, rags and scrap metal to survive. In addition, each of the children had a function within the city, beyond studying. ” I was the head of the dining room. That vision of service means a lot in the life of a child,” says the man from Ourense. The tasks were decided every morning in an assembly.
The City of Boys had “its own laws and borders with customs where you had to show a visa to enter,” explains Campo, as well as “official currency, the crown.” In addition, there were services such as a bank, gas station, school, supermarket, nightclub… They also had shoe and ceramic workshops, whose products they sold to order abroad. The farm It became an autarchy with a parliament made up of child leaderswhich were chosen by vote. The ‘boys’ of Benposta held democratic elections two decades before the rest of Spaniards.
“It was more than just a city. It became a nation,” says Marcelo Ndong, actor and circus artist, to 20 minutes. The first time he heard about the City of Boys was in 1969, when he was just 13 years old. A group of children from Equatorial Guinea received a scholarship to train in Spanish institutions. “We were the first blacks to arrive in Galicia. People were surprised to see us,” he remembers of those first days. “I never perceived discrimination, but I did perceive a lot of ignorance,” he adds.
The impression they had of Benposta was negative. “We found an environment totally different from what we had imagined,” says Ndong. Over there, children learned values such as transparency, solidarity or service through the different tasks and activities assigned to them. “We came from a tribe to Europe to be engineers, lawyers, doctors… not to learn values,” he clarifies. They didn’t like that. Or that’s what they thought. “When we discovered the circus, that great toy, we got hooked,” he admits.
The first circus school in Spain
In 1963, a large blue, white and red tent was erected on the Benposta farm to launch the first National Circus School of Spainthe second in Europe. The debut was three years later in the Plaza de Cataluña, in Barcelona, with their performance ‘Revolution Circus’. After their good reception, they embarked on a tour to other parts of Spain and Portugal. “In the Franco era it was very complicated to travel, but we got the permits and we carried the Spanish flag all over the world,” Ndong acknowledges.
Already in the 70s, after receiving visits from Francisco Franco or Queen Sofía, they toured other European countries, being the first circus to perform at the Grand Palais in Paris. The next thing was to go around the world with stops in the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico… The ‘boys’ got to do the pyramid of harlequins, their most famous act, in the seven wonders of the world. Emperors, kings, presidents and heads of state received them in every city they visited.
They began to receive more and more children. Even There were parents who left their children at the doors of Benposta to welcome them and give them a good future in the circus. “There was a time when 16-year-old Portuguese boys had to go to Angola for two years to do military service. Many crossed the border and we welcomed them to the City of Boys,” remembers José Luis Campo. In the 90s, they were in one of their best moments, with offices in different parts of the worldand being part of the company was more complicated.
“To enter the circus, you first had to take a two-year course in the City of Boys,” says Mustafa Danger, who received a scholarship to the Benposta school at the age of 14, after being caught by a talent in his native Tangier. “It was the best thing that has happened to me in my life“acknowledges the tightrope walker. He arrived at Benposta in 1990 and remembers it as “a dream place for a child.” “There was no classism. There we were all equal, we respected each other,” he says.
From world fame to the decline of Benposta
Mustafa was one of the last children to live in Benposta. Upon returning from a world tour in the early 2000s, he found a “completely finished” farm. “Several companions, the last boys that were left, We started to fix it to make it work again.“, he explains. However, they encountered many problems. “Many people do not want the City of Boys to return,” he acknowledges, without wanting to delve into more details.
“The priest was a father to us, he was a very close person with the children,” explains Marcelo Ndong. “However, as you grow older, you confront him. That’s what happened. We did not accept his way of handling all that. We wanted something more“, he adds. “When we make a program for marginality, it remains. If you create a program for orphaned children, they will be orphans all their lives, even if they are professionals,” says José Luis Campo.
In 2003, the first National Circus School in Spain, located in the emblematic Boys’ City of Benposta, closed its doors forever. And that farm through which thousands of children from all over the world passed was abandoned. The only person who continued to live there was Father Silva, who died in 2011. “But Utopias do not die, they are incarnated in people in some way“explains Campo, who coordinates the Colombia headquarters, one of the few that remains open.
Like many of his colleagues, he tries to help children who find themselves in complicated situations. “The City of Boys gave me the opportunity, now I want to give it to other young people who want to be acrobats,” says Mustafá, who is dedicated to searching for talents, “polishing them, taking them to another level and offering them a work contract.” Marcelo does the same. “Whenever I can, I come to CiudadEscuela Muchachos de Leganés to help,” explains.
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