He visited his father Helios Gómez, inmate in the Barcelona Model prison. He was an anti -Franco trade unionist, painter, posterist and poet of gypsy ethnicity to which Franco’s repression jailed several times. In 1948 he was held for belonging to an association declared as illegal. He was imprisoned until 1954. “Mercé’s Day allowed the relatives to come to prison. I was in the patio of the model with my father. At home we spent a lot of hunger and I saw the chickpea ranch they were going to give them but I did not let me try a bite,” recalls Gómez. It is one of the few memories that it retains. Helios died in 1956 with 51 years. In 1950, being inmate, the prison priest, welcome Lahoz, forced Helios to paint in a cell – the number 1 of the first floor of the fourth gallery – a chapel so that the inmates could pray before they sent them to the husiness squad. “I know that at first he refused. Then he painted a gypsy virgin, Los Angeles too and the characters that appeared in the work were other inmates,” Gabriel instructs. The work of art was renamed the gypsy chapel and only the prisoners of the fourth gallery could enjoy. In 1998, under the convergent mandate in the Minister of Justice of, the director of the model alleged “hygiene reasons” and ordered to paint the cell white. 27 years have passed in which Gabriel has constantly claimed the work and has denounced the artistic aberration perpetrated against the gypsy chapel.
The Restauradores of Movable Goods of the Generalitat have been working for six months to remove up to 15 layers of painting that cover the work of Helios. Yesterday they showed a roof, angels and the Virgin of the artist’s gypsy. Gabriel acknowledges that a small part of the relief to his father has been restored.
The recovery of the gypsy chapel is one of the claims of socialist institutions. The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and the Minister of Culture of the Generalitat, Sònia Hernández, verified yesterday how restoration works advance. Both political leaders, together with the Minister of Social Rights, Mònica Martínez and the Minister of Equality and Feminism, Eva Minor, stressed that Wednesday was the day of fighting antigitanism and wanted to pay, thus, tribute to both that group and the figure of Helios Gómez. Collboni stressed that recovering the chapel is to recover “a heritage treasure that has been hidden for a long time and that some wanted it to always be hidden.”
Gabriel Gómez recalled that the chapel was the first cell of the “death corridor.” There the inmates came minutes before they got into a truck direction to the field of the boot where they shot, above all, the dissidents with the Franco regime. Collboni said the intention is that the work transcends the walls of the prison and becomes a “claim and ay the diverse Barcelona.” The mayor said that, after the bleaching of the cell, without the constancy and claim of Gabriel, it would not have been possible to recover the frescoes of Helios.
The Minister Hernández stressed that the restoration of the chapel reflects that the heritage is “all” and responds to the claim for years of the gypsy, scientific community, historians and neighbors. The counselor recalled that Helios entered prison and was never judged or sentenced, in addition to the painter’s anarchist role and has concluded: “He was an artist for being a revolutionary and revolutionary for being an artist.” Hernández announced that once the restoration is completed, the chapel will be declared as a cultural good of national interest.
The director of the Catalonia Movable Restoration Center, Mireia Mestre, reported that the restoration has been complicated by the layers of paint over the fresco. The cell was an oratory, but also a library, warehouse … and was often mistreated. In the 80s after asking permission to enter the penitentiary center. Even so, the roof was never photographed where, now, more drawings have appeared.
The next fall will continue to be worked on the painting from the lower part of the cell and cannot be visited until the end of 2026 or early 2027. The support of physicochemical laboratories has been needed so as not to damage the original murals. Mestre ensures that a 3D model of the chapel will be carried out to be able to study it better.
