“Thank you! You’re the first person to visit me in almost two years.” Nicola (not his real name) hugs me again. It’s just after 8 p.m. and here in Teixero, a town in northern Spain, it’s still light outside. La Coruña, where I am staying, is about 50 kilometers away. I am returning for the fourth time in two days to the heart of Galicia: small towns, expanses of fields, and a constant stream of trucks transporting the famous Galician milk, consumed throughout Spain. Teixero is one of the largest prisons in Spain: maximum security, more than a thousand inmates, with a significant number of women.
I usually arrive on Friday in the early afternoon. With me are about twenty people: wives, husbands, sisters, and brothers waiting their turn to talk to a family member who is an inmate. It’s 45 minutes, strictly. I begin the series of checks. I am one of the first to enter the waiting room. I remain still and seated for more than twenty minutes, waiting for everyone to pass through the metal detector. A guard leads us to the visiting area. The gates open and close: everything here is monitored. Every breath is recorded by a camera. They put us in a room that barely holds us all. The wait is long, but it is broken by a sudden command: “Who is visiting Nicola? Follow me.” I raise my hand and the guard accompanies me to an area reserved for lawyers and judges. It is one of the gifts that the prison chaplain has given me: a permit for almost two hours to talk in a quiet area.
A light gave him the strength to look at the past and take back control of a life that was almost lost.
Nicola arrives and smiles at me. We haven’t seen each other for a long time. I had completely lost track of him after he was arrested. One day, I received a letter from him. He wrote that for more than a year, he had been accompanied by a phrase I had said to him during our last conversation: “You have to decide whether you want to live or die. If you want to live, I can help you.” He tells me that it was a small light, a star that illuminated him and gave him the strength to look at his past and take back control of a life that, at 30, seemed almost lost. After I told them about Nicola’s letter, my brothers gave me three days to go and visit him.
On the Friday before my departure, I had a meeting with Nicola’s mother. It was a beautiful and profound conversation, which did not spare pain and suffering. I suggested that she write a letter to her son. They had not spoken for five years. It took her almost three days, then she gave it to me with 100 euros and a bag full of laundry. A mother’s heart. I deliver the letter on Sunday, after Mass. Nicola holds the envelope in his hands as if it were a treasure. We meet in the sacristy and talk without the barrier of glass between us. Nicola writes down the essential points of our conversation on a piece of paper, so that he can, he says, live the last 22 months he has left in prison with faith and hope. He asks me to say hello to Beppe and Tommaso, the priests he met in Fuenlabrada.
I arrive in La Coruña at night. From my bedroom window, I look at the sky. It is full of shining stars. They seem to be participating in this intense weekend. They shine, guided by the Director who never stops searching for his children, especially those who are far away and in need of his love.
