Located at the foot of Tibidabo, the Sant Maties monastery offers unbeatable views of the city of Barcelona. Ignasi Segura, 35 years old and an industrial engineer, has lived there for eight months. Specifically, he does it in the old inn on the premises, which once (many years ago) had several nuns of the Jerónimos order as neighbors. The location has changed a lot in a short time. So much so that it now houses three floors. Ignasi resides in one of them along with nine other people, all men (each one has his own room). Eight women live in another. And in the third a family of four members. They all live together in a community under the umbrella of the Lázaro Foundation, which offers a roof to homeless people. That is the case of six of Ignasi’s roommates. The other three, like him, are volunteers.
And what is the task of a volunteer in a community like this?, you may ask. “Just living there and sharing our time with the users. Also help with housework,” says Ignasi.
Neither he nor any other volunteer receives any compensation for being there. Quite the opposite. “We have to pay rent and contribute a monthly amount for food.” They are not the only ones: users also pay. “The rent is adapted to each person’s income and can range from 180 to 380 euros per month. For food we contribute 70 euros per month per person.”
He spends a good part of the day outside the monastery (he works in Sant Cugat). Like him, all the volunteers have their own jobs. And when he returns at the end of his day, his task is to live with the other tenants.
He says that what attracted him to the project is the fact of living as if they were a family, as if they were sharing a flat. He had already done it before (in the Sagrada Familia neighborhood, also in the Sants-Montjuïc district), although it was different. “When you share a flat, everyone does their own thing. “I like to share meals, housework, do things together, as if we were a family.”
He has his own – by the way, she is delighted with the project – but residing in the monastery allows him to be in contact with a reality that was far away and with people very different from him: “It brings me a lot of wealth.”
In particular, the fact of dealing with individuals of all ages. From the youngest, who are usually the volunteers – Andrés (25 years old), Roberto (29) and Israel (33) share a flat with him – to people over 60. “There we are all equal regardless of our origin. We live together as if we were brothers,” he says.
With religious convictions, he particularly likes to share the daily 7 a.m. prayer that is mandatory for volunteers and to which users can join, if they wish. “The project has Catholic roots. “There is a spiritual part.”
He plans to leave the monastery on August 31. On that date it will be one year since the start of the project in Barcelona (it did so in September 2023), to which it has been linked from day one. One year is the maximum length of stay stipulated for a volunteer, although it is possible to extend a second.
On the contrary, users have no exit deadline. “They can stay as long as they want,” argues François Delafuys, a member of the board of the Lázaro Foundation and responsible for the project landing in Barcelona (seven years before he had done so in Madrid). “The idea is that they won’t be around forever, unless they are very old. If that is the case, it is good for them to stay much longer, as long as they want, since they constitute a pillar of the house,” he adds.
He explains that in France (the country where the initiative was born, where it is present in 13 cities) the average is between a year and a half and two years. “It is the time they need to return to a normal life,” says Delafuys, a native of Nantes and who has lived in Barcelona for about seven years.
That is the first objective, to return to normality. “Something as simple as having a schedule again: getting up in the morning, having breakfast, lunch, dinner, sharing your time with others. It is the most important thing at the beginning.”
Not everyone can be a volunteer or user of Sant Maties (or the rest of the foundation’s flats, whether in Madrid or in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Mexico, where they are also present). In the case of the former, there is an age requirement: they must be between 25 and 35 years old.
Regarding the latter, the requirements are greater. There are three main ones: that they do not have any very serious mental or physical illness – “we couldn’t handle it, we are not professionals, but volunteers,” Delafuys reasons -; They cannot have any addiction either – “we do welcome people who are in the process of overcoming it”; and that they have the real will to live in community.
The people who reach them come from different associations, which are the ones who will monitor them. And the one who ensures that everything flows in the house is the responsible family, as they call it. “Their role is to make sure everything works,” explains Delafuys. “He is also an authority figure. They are available to users in case they have any problems.” In the case of Barcelona, ??this family has four members.
Like the rest of the tenants, they also pay their rent and do not receive any financial reward. “Volunteering or being a family that runs the property is not a job, it is a mission.” Their maximum length of stay is three years. “In some cases they have had an extra year of extension because we did not have a substitute family yet and they were motivated to extend it further. But our idea is clear: the project does not belong to anyone, but to the project itself.”
Each floor is financed with the contribution of all the tenants. In the case of Barcelona, ??they cover the rent of the hostel, which is owned by the Glòria d’Oriola Cortada Foundation, a civil private foundation.
The project also has private donations that allowed, in the case of the Sant Maties monastery property, to cover the cost of the works to create the three floors that currently exist, according to Delafuys, a businessman by profession and who dedicates 50% of their time to initiatives such as the Lázaro Foundation.
Ignasi remembers well how the space was transformed to accommodate the project. Officially, he has resided in the inn since it opened its doors and began receiving users, in September 2023. But he landed in the place almost a year before. “It was already present when the monastery began to be remodeled to build the three houses that there are now.” Along with other volunteers, he was in charge of ensuring that no one accessed the area while it was under construction. All of them then lived in rooms that were already equipped.
After eight months of life, so far the experience is very positive and the project seems to be in good health. “It’s going very well, although problems arise, as in all houses,” says Delafuys. “The users who reside there have had problems for many years. But wow, volunteers have their personalities too. Living in a community is not easy,” he adds.
Remember that the initiative (which is about to open new homes in some more countries, such as the United Kingdom, and is studying establishing itself in others, such as Italy or Portugal) is about “the encounter between two worlds that do not speak to each other, which is that of the rich and the poor.” Hence, he says, they have sought to locate in the Sarrià neighborhood, a wealthy area of ??Barcelona. “The idea is that they coexist in harmony, in a friendly manner,” concludes Delafuys.