From writing a suicide note to smiling again: "Football is the key"

Torelló"When I tell my life, most people don't know what to say. They just stay silent," explains Ricardo Torres (Madrid, 1987), a player for the Spanish national team for the homeless. He has just returned from Oslo (Norway), host of the twentieth edition of the Homeless World Cup. The tournament is held annually with the challenge of changing lives and offering hope and second chances through football. Of working for social inclusion and visibility, and against stigmas and prejudices.

As a child, he dreamed of being a soccer player, like so many others. He admired Ronaldo Nazário. So much so that he even styled his hair. "It was a very beautiful dream, but when I was eight or nine, I had to put all my dreams aside," he spits crudely, the son of a broken family. He says he had no childhood. Looking back hurts, but he's used to the pain, a longtime companion on the journey: "Children say they want to be lawyers, doctors, soccer players, veterinarians. It's normal childhood. This is what I haven't been able to live: a normal, everyday life." When the doorbell rang to let him go play soccer or go for a bike ride, he had to say no. He had to take care of his two nephews: changing their diapers, cooking. He was also hit by the diagnosis of intellectual disability, "due to childhood trauma," and his parents' divorce. Mom was sick. He often came home from school to find her staring blankly in the doorway: the relative who was supposed to administer his insulin was hitting and stealing from him. He says that all this drags on, that it takes a toll. "It takes a lot of toll," he admits.

"What killed me was not being able to do the things I would have loved to do. My problem is that they've never let me do what I wanted to do," he laments. "If I'd had other conditions..." he sighs. He says that at the age of studying and playing and making his family proud, he already had the responsibilities of an adult. And that at twelve or thirteen, he had to roll up his sleeves to stop two evictions. "At twelve or thirteen, you're a kid who's about to take on the world." He'd already taken on the world. He speaks with a harshness that's intimidating.

Six years ago, he separated and his mother died: "I had no one to turn to for refuge, so I turned to the damn drugs." Until he suffered a nervous breakdown. Suddenly, he found himself on the streets. He didn't forget everyday actions like bathing in public fountains under scrutinizing eyes, and especially that first night. "The first night I found myself in the situation I found myself in," he says, without meaning to, it was a rainy day. "I was soaked and had no spare clothes. I went from one place to another, taking shelter however I could until I found a park with some shelter. That's where he spent the first two or three days." He continues: "You never really sleep, on the street. You always have to keep one eye open. You sleep in fear that something might happen to you." He spent many nights at the door of a church. He lived on the streets until he hit rock bottom.

The Suicide Letter

The situation was unbearable. "I couldn't take it anymore. I wrote a suicide note. The idea was to make photocopies in a call center and hang them on lampposts and walls so people would understand what we were going through," he says. He first wrote it on his cell phone and then typed it into a notebook by hand to make photocopies. "The idea was to make the copies, hang them up, and leave forever." He has a wound on his left arm. He attempted suicide on August 5, 2023, his birthday. "I was so alone. I no longer had the strength to live or to go on. I just wanted to leave, to rest in peace, not suffer, and for no one to remember me." He still has the letter saved. In the text, he lamented that the homeless are so "invisible" to society. There are more than 28,500 homeless people in Spain, according to the INE (National Institute of Statistics).

One day, while wandering around the Vallecas neighborhood, he discovered the Lavapiés Dragons, a unique club for its social and community nature that brings together more than 600 players of more than fifty nationalities. There he found the "drive" to lift his head. He was afraid of getting together with people, used to being alone. He was used to being rejected, used to getting dirty looks and seeing people crossing paths to avoid him. But his fears soon gave way to tears of joy: "I felt like I was eight or nine years old again and I became a little happier." "Football made me grow my self-esteem. Not to 100%, but if before I had it at 2%, now I have it at 25 or 30%. I've been able to sort my life out a bit and believe that you can get out of this situation," he says. "Football is the key to everything," he claims. "It has revealed to him the word belonging.

From having nothing to playing a World Cup

He'll always remember Oslo. The Homeless World Cup titles have flown to Egypt and Uganda, but the tournament has as many winners as participants. "I went from having nothing to playing for in a World Cup. It felt like I was dreaming, but I never woke up. And in the end, you see it's not a dream, it's real. I'll carry that happiness with me until the last day of my life. It's a happiness I don't know how to describe. These are moments I'll never forget." He now lives in a boarding house and works as a caretaker in a housing development. He dreams again: "Hopefully in one or two years I'll have my own apartment and my whole situation will be resolved, and I'll be able to say, 'Finally, I'm out, finally I have a house, finally I have a job, and finally I can be happy again.'"