Night of Friday, 20th of August, 2004 was my farewell from my friends because next Sunday I would set off to Lisbon in the beginning of my Erasmus voyage. Some days before I had fallen down in the swimming pool and I had my hip worn out. We gathered in Dani’s house, we were Alex, Dani, Sara, Bea and me, to drink alcohol in huge quantities as we usually did. We used to drink whisky with coca-cola. We started to play to Trivial while we were drinking. It was Alex and me against Dani, Bea and Sara.

We got really drunk and the high level of alcohol in our bodies made Alex and me to go wrong more times than we expected. So, in the end Bea, Dani and Sara won the game. We prepared to go out. The direction was a bar in Huertas, in the town centre of Madrid.

We drank a few more glasses and it was a scandal. In a circle with other guys Alex began to talk loud, in front of some girls.

“This girl here is a bitch; I fuck her when I want. Look how filthy she is, the very whore” he was talking about Bea.
“Hey Alex, calm down” I told him, despite of my ethyl state.
“But look how bitchy she is, how whore”.

We were at the low floor of the bar and Alex went up to look around. When he came back he fell down the stair and he dug the handrail into his stomach. Bloody and with eyes lightened he came to us.

“Fuck off”
“Oh shit, Alex, be careful” I told him
“Fuck you, asshole”

I’ve been always very sensitive to what happens in my surroundings. And because of the alcohol in those moments I didn’t have a truth perception of reality. Then something happened. It was like if my identity was crossed with Alex’s one. Since then I began to behave like him and also I began to do stupidities. I stood up in front of the bar and I tried to steal anything by stretching my left arm. Then something happened – the waitress saw me and I did a sharp movement to get my arm out of there. It was at that point when I hit with the bar’s corner, it sounded “crack” and I had my collarbone broken. With the last lights I had in my mind I got out from de bar and I took a taxi to go back home.

When I got home I tried to put my arm in the best position I could, to be able to sleep, thinking that next day it wouldn’t hurt any more. Next day my arm did hurt even more. But I wasn’t going to sacrifice my Erasmus voyage because a stupidity like that, I thought.

I spent next day in my bed. I was a completely loser, with my collarbone broken and my hip worn out. But I needed to escape from that place, I thought, once more in a wrong way. I couldn’t give up my Erasmus voyage. Only getting out from home, there would be no matter at all, that’s what I thought. But matters were just in the beginning.

The dated Sunday, 22nd of August of 2004, the bus from Madrid to Lisbon departed. It was at last my freedom, after 21 years I was going to try life by myself. I slept a little bit during the journey, mostly because of the pain I felt in my arm. I felt like the owner of the world. I got to Lisbon very soon in the morning; so soon that they hadn’t even opened the underground. I was alone, with my collarbone broken and my pilgrim rucksack at my back, crushing my battered collarbone. It was an extreme situation. However, my pilgrimage experience gave me the courage to go ahead without looking back. After a bit more of suffering I got to the University. There wasn’t a living soul. It should be 8 in the morning and the only thing I saw was the security people. I was waiting, sleeping over my rucksack, in the open air, just waiting for people to wake up. At last I found the meeting point, the science building, where I could find the Erasmus coordinator. As I didn’t know what to do, I took down some phone numbers from some flats where I could accommodate. After a while, Ana Paula arrived, she was the coordinator, and she recognized me at a view.

She looked me from top to down and found out that I was an Erasmus student. She took me to her office and we talked for a while. She told me where the Portuguese lessons were given, so I went there. I took the free Portuguese course that was given to Erasmus students. When I came back I met Kathrine and Unai with Ana Paula, they were other Erasmus students interested in the Portuguese lessons.

After the introduction we went to the University Students Residence Office. Kathrine and Unai had a bed in one of the residences, but I didn’t because I did the scholarship steps in the last moment. This annoyed me a lot. But I couldn’t do anything else. From Madrid I had booked a bed in the Pousada da Juventude at Lisbon so I was going to that place after the Portuguese lessons. Kathrine showed me enthusiastically where the youth hostel was. They arrived to Lisbon on Sunday, and they had been looking around the city since then.

When I booked a bed for six days in the youth hostel I was a bit confused. I thought that I had to send the data of my Visa. Instead of that I sent the data of my debit card. So I sent another e-mail with the data if my Visa. According to this, people in charge of the hostel had the data of my two cards. This caused me an addition concern that I will explain a bit later.

Kathrine went to the city to take her things out of the hostel and carry them to the residence. Unai and I took the first Portuguese lesson. I was really clapped out. But I was ready to deal with these trials. My experience as an alcoholic provided me a supernatural strength.

So we spent the morning. In the afternoon Kathrine and Andre came to the lessons. Andre was another German guy.

Alfonso was still to come; he was another student from Madrid. When we finished our classes we divided, I went to take my bags and went to the hostel were I was going to live next 6 days. 6: the number of the beast. When I got to the hostel I was near to surrender. Then I saw a big queue next to the door. Until 4 o’clock they wouldn’t open. I waited for a while and at last we could enter. When I got to the counter they asked me if I had done the booking. I told them I did but they didn’t ask me for a sign or something like that. It seemed to me a bit strange. But I was a bit tired to ask. The only thing I wanted was to get to my bed and wait until my arm recovered. I got to the room and chose a bed while there wasn’t anybody else. This seemed to me strange too, because in the room there were 6 bunk beds and one normal bed. It’s supposed that rooms could have at most 6 people. It was number 6 again. So, why was there an extra bed? The pain from my arm didn’t let me think clearly. And, especially, I was annoyed that in the residence there was a free bed because of Alfonso’s absence.

At the hostel I knew a lot of people. There were travellers from the entire world, from Holland, from Brazil. All of them had much money in their pockets. I told them I was beginning my Erasmus voyage. The days passed without many changes. From 11 to 4 we had Portuguese lessons and after that I searched for any room I found in the advertisements at the University. Until the fourth day I couldn’t stand the pain any more and I went to hospital, to ask the doctors what happened with my arm. News wasn’t very good: I had my collarbone broken. They put me a bandage that made me look like a mummy. Despite of that, I wasn’t in the line to give up; I had to follow my road. That was what I learnt as a pilgrim in the road to Santiago. The day after I assisted to the lessons with all my upper-body covered with bandages until the neck and everyone was astonished. “What is doing here that drug-addict?” they would ask. However, I stayed like nothing was happening.

Then Alfonso told me that his room-mate was leaving just the night before I was leaving the youth hostel. So I decided to occupy the University Students Residence. With my arm in cabestrillo, it was an extreme situation. But I stayed there suffering like a dog. Alfonso found an advertisement of a flat with 5 rooms. He thought it was perfect for us 5. I disappointed him because what I wanted was to assimilate as much Portuguese culture as possible, not to lose my voyage inside the Erasmus bubble. Also I didn’t like my Portuguese lessons mates, I was not sure that a living with them could go well. According to this reasoning, I told Alfonso that at the moment I didn’t want to rent the flat with them.

But things weren’t proceeding so easily. The fact was that in doubt to my flashy dressing, in the residence they noticed that we were 5 and they only had 4 people registered. Then what they did at first was taking off the sheets from one of the beds that Alfonso and I shared. It’s not a problem; we took the sheets from a bed in Unai and Andre’s room. Next day the woman in charge of the residence dropped round our room. I was alone.

“How many are you in this room?”
“Two” – I said with no doubt.

Then, when we went to the lessons, they took a bed away from our room. It was excessive. It was the last night we were at the residence, because next day my mates were leaving to the flat they had hired. That night I slept in Kathrine’s room. I made a verbal agreement on a flat near the one where my mates would finally live. Then something happened. Ana Paula offered to me a bed in one of the residences from the University. But I messed up again, because I bet that the previous verbal agreement would go well. And it didn’t.

The thing is that the owner of the flat asked me the 300 euros that it cost for the following day. With the shitty cards from my father I wasn’t able to get more than 190 €. I hadn’t more money. On top on everything else, I ruined one of my cards by putting my password wrong for 3 times. I was very annoyed. Especially, I was surprised that I couldn’t get money from the cash point. My mind began to scheme that it was a possibility that the people from the youth hostel could have taken my data for buying through the Internet. I rejected a bed in a residence before all that. The world fell down above my head. So, after the flat owner told me that I couldn’t stay there any more I took all my bags to the other students flat, believing that it wouldn’t be a problem that I finally decided to live with them. I thought that they would be happy for having found the 5th passenger. Spaniards were happy. But Germans weren’t. They told that I couldn’t live with them in a definitive way. That I could stay with them for a week as a guest, and after that they would decide. In spades, I felt like a shit. But I had been working hard for that after all those absurdities.

Then I said, I just have to wait and watch time go by. The rest of the Erasmus students would arrive in a few days and I was sure that I would find in them someone nearer to my style. But pressure was still on my shoulders. Living in the flat with the German students and the Spaniards was a horror to me. I was there as a guest, with no rights. A fucking shit. The thing was that they told to Ana Paula that she looked for a 5th passenger that must be neither German nor Spanish. I went to the town centre with Unai. I got on a bit with him and with Andre. And so the days passed, until the Erasmus Introduction Date. I had gone back to the hospital and they took my dressing away. I was a bit more presentable. Then I met Macarena, a girl from Granada that has an important part in this episode.

The days after I did everything as possible for my Erasmus mates, helping them to find a flat, helping them in anything. I hadn’t a flat yet, but worrying about myself was the last thing I would do. I walked along Lisbon from top to down, my mates laughed at me saying that I was going to make a state agency. Life was pleasant those days; I was getting better all the time and connected a bit better with the Erasmus girls. I liked Macarena. But once again alcohol was my ruin. At last, the date – when I had to leave the flat from the two Germans and the two Spaniards – came.

That very day my mates offered me to stay with them. And I said that I agreed with them. But I had been talking about that with Macarena and she was the one who told me to leave them. With no flat at all, I had the enough face to tell them that I left the flat. That night all the Erasmus students went out, but I didn’t because I hadn’t any money. I had to go back to Madrid to pick up my other things and move definitely. Then I gave a letter to Unai, Andre, Kathrine and Alfonso, that I wrote, and 100 € for the 12 days that I had been living with them. The letter said – in an English written language quite correct – the following

“It’s difficult for me to write in this language, because it comes from a place too far from where I come from. But I thought it was the best I could do, for being understood by you all. Living with you has been so hard these days and that is the reason why I decided not to stay with you. I think you’re wrong with the idea of not accepting either a German or a Spaniard. Each person is unique and you are losing too much putting that limit to people from those countries. Do you know where I come from? In my ID card it may appear that I come from Spain, but I really come from nowhere.”

I got to bed and next morning I saw a funny picture. Andre and Unai where crying in the kitchen. They got a terrible fright. They thought that I had gone to the fucking street. Macarena slept that night with Alfonso. I was annoyed with that. I talked with Andre and I told him that he could go to sleep, that nothing really mattered, that I only wanted to express my sentiments, to be understood. And they understood.

The thing is that after all that episode my maniac mind began to think in an unstoppable way. It had been so much pressure. I was in a new country. I met new people. My collarbone had been broken. I had experienced an extreme living. It was so much to my young mind. Macarena was living in a flat from some gay people, until she found other to stay definitely. At that point I met Josep, another Erasmus student from Barcelona that was living there too. He was in Lisbon since two months before that day, working for an enterprise.

Josep was looking for a flat near Bairro Alto, which is a centrally situated area from Lisbon. Macarena and I agreed to go with him to see the flat. The thing is that there were only two free beds. So I said – “They go before me”, referring to Macarena and Josep. In my mind I had the idea to occupy Josep’s room in the flat from the gays, when I finally would move. Like Don Quixote, I tried to deshacer entuertos. So I said to Josep “When you leave the flat tell the owner that I’m interested, so you make a good impression to him”.

The place where Josep and Macarena where living at that moment was a sixth floor that had no elevator. It was a completely bohemian flat and I thought it could be interesting to live with gay people. So I told the owner that when I would come back from Madrid I would be interested in a room there.

When I arrived to Madrid I completely needed to drink alcohol. After all that I suffered I only had the illusion to drink huge quantities of alcohol to forget about life. I told my friends how I spent all those days in Lisbon. However, my behaviour was special. I was in highest point of my maniac phase. I thought all Spaniards were fascist, only because of the way they used the language. So I began to call all of them fascists, to my father, to my older brother, to my friends, to everyone I met.

One thing why I came to Madrid was to cancel my cards that have caused to me so many worries. I thought that the ones from the hostel had robbed me. The jigsaw pieces fitted. I couldn’t take any money, I had given the data of my two cards to the people from the hostel, and they were Nazis. Before I came to Madrid I told Ana Paula “People from the hostel are bad”, especially referring to their neo-Nazi ideology.

At home I told my parents that if they wanted I would stay in Madrid, I would renounce to my scholarship and all that stuff. In the beginning they said that I couldn’t give up the scholarship. Then my madness exploded. I told them the things clearly, and how much they did have fucked my life. They noticed I was quite nervous. So I began to insult them and calling them everything. I had so much resentment deep down. So they told me that I couldn’t leave, that I had to stay in Madrid. That was what I was waiting, that they told me the truth and took off their disguises. So I said “How? So you want me to stay. Please, stop fucking my life!!!” Next thing they did was asking me to go to a professional doctor or something. So I said “I’m not mad!!!” At last I managed to go back to Lisbon. But I was very, very annoyed.

Before I returned to Lisbon, I phoned to Macarena and told her I liked her. I also told her that my life was shit. Once again I couldn’t wait to the things happen as they have to. Definitely, my relationship with women was a complete failure.

I came back to Lisbon. I phoned to the owner of the flat of the gay people, and asked him for a room. He told me he had one free, so I went there. I hadn’t slept during the trip. I was pretty euphoric. Just when I arrived I told Macarena that everyone had hit me since I was a child. Naturally that made her to go away from me. When things go well to yourself everybody stands around you, when things go worse, that’s quite different. So I fell in a brutal depression. I couldn’t stand Macarena’s rejection, but the truth is that I didn’t even give time to her to reject me. In the flat from the gay people I spent the evenings talking with them, with Alberto, one of the owners, a good fellow, and some French girls.

“I think that one of the reasons that the Castilian language is not being talked in the rest of the world is the pronunciation of the double r” – I commented one of my original ideas – “in Portuguese, for example, people pronounce the double r as they like, some times as in French, others as in Castilian”.
“Interesting” – Alberto told me.
“And after that parents bring to their children to the speech therapists, like Macarena” – I continued with my speech hyper-critic with everything from Spain. Macarena studied for speech therapist.

Another thing I told to Alberto was this

“People are not machines, we’re still animals” – I said with my typical grandiloquence. “It’s true; everyone has a shit, don’t they?” – Alberto told me.
“And after that they have to clean their asses!” – Alberto’s laughter thundered through the whole room.

I spent the days after really annoyed. I remember a Portuguese guy that saw me at the University and told me in correct Castilian: “I hope everything goes well to you here”. Then I met Andreu, a friend of Josep, who had come to see Lisbon. I came with him in his tourist trips and I told him everything I got in my mind; that was so many things. I thought that fascism had been too cruel with our beloved Iberia. That the truth artists from our native country did end in drugs or in psychiatrics. I was so affected by the Three Eleven Attacks in Madrid and I thought that the Iberian Peninsula still have a lot of Arabian influence, despite all that. Andreu listened to me patiently while we walked through Lisbon.

When Andreu came back to Barcelona I stayed like Don Quixote without his Sancho Panza. Loneliness made me go mad. I thought that they wanted to kill me because I was one of those who had found the truth. Like Martin Luther King, Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain before me. I began to think that I was like them, a fighting man for the good causes, a fighting man against fascism. And I went mad. What I decided was to buy a bottle of Scotch whisky and let my bizarre imagination run wild. I entered in a museum and I wrote everything I had inside my soul, that was to thank to every people I had met for curing my madness. Perhaps it was a bit late. When I got out from the museum I saw two people entering with what my hallucinations made me think that were fire guns. I went out from there and I walked to the next taxi station. I said to the driver

“Please, to the 25th of April Bridge”.

And he drove me there. I was with my bottle of whisky, my rucksack and my hallucinations.

At that time all my life passed in front of my eyes. I tried to find an explanation to my suffering. But I only found a bizarre reasoning. I began to think that I was a Messiah and I made a cross down the bridge. I was still drinking. I was completely drunk when I appeared in front of a train, just at the point to run over me. I was with other 3 Portuguese guys – I didn’t know what they where doing there. After the train episode I continued to drink till death. But now, to my hallucinations it was added a manic persecutory madness. I continued walking and drinking. What I remember was seeing some guys fighting in the street and a guy lent me his car to spend the night. Inside the car there was a notebook with some writings done by other Erasmus students. It was something like the guidelines for a cultural revolution within the European Union. It was too much for my young mind. I began to speak alone thinking that someone would be listening to me from any place. I began to thank every genius that had enlightened me. More than ever, I believed I was a Messiah. I tried to start the car in vain. I quitted the hand-brake and the car slit a bit down the road. A tramway was passing once and again. One of the drivers went down to look what was happening. What I wanted was that he helped me to start the car, but I didn’t find the keys anywhere.

A bit after the dawn I got out of the car. I began to walk barefoot over the paving stones from Lisbon. In a tree in front of the car I found a wooden stick that I used as a walking stick. So I continued walking until I found a park. There I began to ponder what I was experiencing. I swung for a while. A lady passed with her kids. Frightened, she moved further away quickly. After a while I took up again my long walk. In a wide street I found a police-man and told him that I had been robbed. I asked him for the hospital. He came with me to take a taxi. But I wanted to continue my particular viacrucis. So I said to the taxi driver that I wanted to go to Oriente, which is where expo 98 was made. When I arrived I began to drink a lot of orange juice in a refreshment stall in an eccentric way; some people who stayed in front of me for a while were really amazed. When I got without energy I went to next police station, inside a mall. They took me into a taxi and drove me to the hospital.

At the hospital what I said first was that I had fear about people. But they didn’t take care of me. They told me that the day after I would see a psychologist and after that I would see a psychiatrist. Policemen went to my house, the gays’ flat, and the two French girls came to pick me up. But I was still in my own world. When we got out of the hospital I began to ask for orange juice and I left them. Both girls let me go. I got to a gas station and I bought two bottles of Sunny Delight. After drinking them inside the gas station I began to vomit it. The shop assistant insulted me a little bit and I got out of that place.

The following thing I did was to call to the entry phones of some buildings I found. I wanted to have a speech with Einstein. After that I discovered the number of God, the 0. Mi perturbed mind deduced that our names where numbers in fact and that each of us had a number assigned. Authentic numbers were from 1 to 6. 0 was the number of God. From 7 and more it was a modern invention to get to number 10, so we got the decimal numeric system.

I continued walking and I entered the Jose Alvalade Stadium. I was like a wild goat. I began to empty the fire extinguishers and some water began to fall from the ceiling. I had a shower and closed my eyes. Then I thought I watched the Holy Trinity. I had never been so near from God, I thought. After that some police-men appeared with bad looking appearance and began to hit me. I stayed there like the Lamb of God that takes sin away from the world. At last other policeman arrived and asked me if I wanted to report the other policemen that had been hitting me. I said that I didn’t want to report them.

They took me to the police station and asked for my personal data. Then the owner and two other guys from the flat came. They brought me some clothes. But my madness was still in the air. First I went to a psychiatric a bit bizarre; the nurse that took care of me had a letter with her. I will never know what was written in it. They took some radiography from my body. I was still thinking and I began to believe that I was some kind of Terminator that had the brains of Jesus, kept during two thousand years in whisky barrels.

At last they took me from that hospital. They took me to other hospital and I was still doing my particular revolution. The doctor asked me why I was doing all that and I answered that I did it for women of the world. After a while, I landed in what was happening to me, they were imprisoning me. So I went even madder, if it was possible. I wanted to escape. I thought they wanted to wash my brains. I wasn’t so far from reality. I began to say that I was son of Johnny Depp and that I was a Mohican. I began to howl like North American Indians do, ooooh, oooh, ooooh, oooooh. They gave me some medicines and took me to the psychiatric centre.

I have some slight memories of what happened after that, but I think it’s not so important. Completely drugged, my parents came to see me. I talked with the psychiatrist and told him my revolutionary speech. And I began to write poetry. I threw some light inside that place. I was 2 weeks in that place. After that I came back to Madrid and I had a brutal depression during a long time. But now I see all that like a reborn.

Madrid, 27th of July of 2007.