A second chance at life behind the stove

BarcelonaSergi was 36 years old when he lost everything. A bakery on Passeig Maragall, a rotisserie on Ronda del Guinardó, and a Mediterranean cuisine restaurant in Lliçà d'Amunt. But "a bad turn of events" pushed him to live on the street: he lost his businesses and the bank foreclosed on his house. But what cost him the most to recover was his identity. He had gone from having 38 employees and a business under his charge to having nowhere to take shelter. For six years he lived inside ATMs, under restaurant awnings, seeking shelter in parking lots in Nou Barris and Paral·lel. But his worst enemy came inside a glass bottle. "I was drinking about twelve liters of alcohol a day. By the time I realized it, it was already too late," he explains. But he did it, and his life has turned around. Now he runs the stoves at the Arrels Foundation workshop, where he prepares breakfast, lunch, and a snack. "What do I cook? Whatever they give me," he says with a smile.

Sergi tries to date the time he lived on the street, but it is difficult for him. The beginning and the end of one day and the next blur together. "You no longer know if it's Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday..." he says. He explains that, at first, it is easier to go to restaurant bathrooms discreetly. Until, as the months went by, he went unshaven and without being able to shower for weeks. "My physical appearance took a back seat; the only thing that mattered to me was getting alcohol. I was lost," he admits. His life became an attempt at survival. Without thinking. Without looking beyond. He only had to make sure that, when he was drunk, his few belongings wouldn't get stolen. And he entered a vicious cycle.

He has been working with the Arrels Foundation for fourteen years, an organization that helps homeless people in Barcelona. Like many others, they found him on the street during a census and offered him a place to stay in a shelter. At the time, he refused. But he did go there to shower three times a week. “That motivated me a little bit,” explains Sergi, who had gone eight or nine months without doing so. Little by little, it seemed that things were starting to improve. Through Arrels, he found an apartment to live in and a dining hall to fill his stomach, even though most days he wasn't hungry. He started working in the foundation's showers and locker rooms, but he relapsed into addiction. “And you cannot help people living on the street when you yourself are carrying a backpack loaded with problems,” he explains.

"They told me I was dying"

He had to leave everything once again. His routine was once again based on sleeping, drinking, and eating. It was a hospital scare that changed his life. Two years ago, the doctors who treated him said that his body would not survive for more than 48 hours. “They told me I was dying,” he explains. That was his signal to put an end to alcohol consumption. It was not an easy fight. But with sobriety, he achieved what he calls "a second life".

In the past, Sergi had a restaurant with a kitchen staff of nineteen people. Now everything is simpler and smaller. He prepares breakfast, lunch, and snacks for 25 people – users of the social housing apartments and the Arrels workshops – although in winter there are more, since many homeless people go there looking for one of his hot dishes. In addition, he also fills lunch boxes with the leftover food so that those who want it can take it home.

Unlike the "often bland" dishes that most of the city's soup kitchens offer to those most in need, Sergi explains that he prepares a weekly menu that, if not identical, comes very close to that of a restaurant. He plays with the ingredients that arrive as donations to the foundation every Tuesday. And although the variety is limited, Sergi manages to offer a menu of up to three or four dishes.

Throughout this process, moreover, he fell in love with a worker at the foundation. "Next year I will leave the social housing apartment and we will go live together," he explains happily. Sergi has found himself again. And along the way, he has rediscovered love and recovered his passion: cooking.