#the cranes are the symbol of my province

[nabaath-areng]

Photos from last year.. heaven on earth

[reyaint]

AESPA dr | intro

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date: october 24, 2024.

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--photo edited by me

𝒎𝒆𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑾𝑰𝑵𝑫

ZEPHYRIANNA ❪제피리안나❫, also known as ZEPHYRI is a Haiqinian member of the South Korean girl group aespa and the female unit GOT the beat, She made her solo debut on October 9th, 2024 with THE FLASH.

OFFICIAL COLORS: red

SOLO FANDOM NAME: nobles

𝑰𝒕 𝒄𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒎𝒆 𝒊𝒏 𝒂 𝒇𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒉

ZEPHYRIANNA

Career

Main Vocalist, Lead Dancer, Sub-Rapper, Center, Maknae

ae-Zephyrianna

Rep Symbol; Falling Star 💫

Rep Animal; Lioness 🦁

Ability;

Training Period; 3 years, 6 months

Talents; dancing and vocals.

Specialities; mind games.

ISTJ (formerly INTJ)

Haiqinian

Insta; Zeph_lian

Basics

Aeolian Medea Kayena Solon

CN Name; Zhao Na Feng ❪赵娜峰❫

KR Name; Kwon Mi Ae ❪권미에❫

English Name; Anne Solon

Birthplace; Waterlight City, Nirin Province, Haiqin

November 17, 2002

Scorpio

Horse

O-

5’9 ft ❪177cm❫

VC: 96neko, Rubyeye

Trivias (Kprofiles)

Education: Golden Waterlight Elementary (Graduated), Vamaithi Middle School (Graduated), Seoul International High School (Graduated)

Special Ability: mind games, she can touch her elbows from behind

Nicknames: lian, dea, medi, miae, nea, kayn, zephyri, zeph, zephlian,

Favorite Words: love

Favorite Foods: Nirin Stew, steak, kimchi, spicy foods

Favorite Color: crimson, any shade of purple or blue

Favorite Season: autumn

Favorite Animals: foxes, haiqin lioness, golden waterlight butterflies, cats, dogs, wolves, deer

Favorite Movies: a silent voice, crybaby (1990), ballerina, fast and furious: tokyo drift

Favorite type of Music: rock and pop, folk as well like the crane wives or poor man's poison

��𝒆𝒕'𝒔 𝒑𝒍𝒂𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆

-Excited for this dr

-I use the same name for pretty much every dr I have bc I love it sm

-My kprofiles for my drs are relatively the same bc I just find it easier copy and pasting so yeah

-I changed the positions to what I think fits for the group so yeah

KARINA; Leader, Main Dancer, Lead Rapper, Sub-Vocalist, Visual, Face of the Group

GISELLE; Main Rapper, Sub-Vocalist

WINTER; Lead Vocalist, Lead Dancer, Visual

NINGING; Main Vocalist, Visual

ME; Main Vocalist, Lead Dancer, Lead Rapper, Center, Maknae

-I did a pretty basic of my dr since I'm still doing the script.

[cameronnicholls-blog1]

PRACTICE CHALLENGE 1 : LIFE BEFORE THE SELECTION

A/N: I knew I would post the last day lmao. The fic is not that long, sorry to have a life exams coming, but the video and the edits balance that? I guess? And even if it reveals a clue about who I could be, I prefer to warn that English is not my first language, that’s normal if you see errors in the text. So now enjoy (it won’t be easy to enjoy anything with Cameron but try to)!

Before, I used to do sports to get rid of the energy which was always running in my blood. I used to seem to be under caffeine all the time. But it was before. Now I did sports to get rid of my feelings. Or the few feelings I had. I was empty, desperately empty, only pain and anger in my heart. And it was killing me, bit by bit.

  I spent all the afternoon at the swimming-pool, drowning my now usual negativity in the chloride water. For the first time in months, I felt good. Good enough to hummer while eating a chocolate bar. I even ate for fun, something which hadn’t happened since… eight months? Nine? I stopped counting the days since he left me pregnant and moved to another province without telling anyone, even me. I knew my life was better without him, oh I was perfectly aware of that. But he left too many damages when he disappeared. Damages which would leave scars all my life. In all the meanings this word could have.

  I looked through the window of the kitchen. We lived in the center of Halafaics, but we could still see the cranes of the port. It had been a long since I last went there, I realized. I used to love walking through the cargos and smelling the sea… but now there was nothing I could love doing… except maybe surfing. It was the only thing calming me. Maybe because it was sometimes a dangerous sport and I needed to do dangerous things to feel better.

  “Where have you been?” A cold voice asked suddenly. I turned back and saw my dear mother. How to break a peaceful moment, by Moira Nicholls. She was so talented to make me feel like shit. Since we discovered I was suffering from dyslexia and hyperactivity, she had been rejecting me and making me understand that I was never doing enough. She didn’t care about me, and I learnt to ignore her and her mean remarks. She wasn’t a mother to me. Her existence spoilt my life.

  I showed her my wet red hair. “Guess.”

  She sighed. “Doing nothing of your day, as always.” I wrinkled my nose. If I stayed closed in my room all day long to work on science like my younger brother Monroe, she wouldn’t say I did nothing of my days. But sports for a Three were useless after all.

  Mom threw a letter on the counter of the kitchen. “You’ll be useful for once.” It was so nice to be considered as an object by my own mother. I took the letter and immediately recognized the symbol of the Illéan monarchy. I looked at my mother suspiciously but finally opened it. She started taping her foot, knowing already it would take me time to read and understand the contents of the letter.

  The recent census has confirmed that a single woman between the ages of sixteen and twenty currently resides in your home. We would like to make you aware of an upcoming opportunity to honor the great nation of Illéa. Our beloved prince, Dominic Schreave, is coming of age this month. As he ventures into this new part of his life, he hopes to move forward with a partner, to marry a true Daughter of Illéa. If your eligible daughter, sister, or charge is interested in possibly becoming the bride of Prince Dominic and the adored princess of Illéa, please fill out the enclosed form and return it to your local Province Services Office. One woman from each province will be drawn at random to meet the prince.

  Holy shit. She wanted me to fill the form. She wanted me to participate. To go to Angeles and to compete for man I didn’t even like. Holy shit. Holy shit.

  I looked at her, she looked at me. I knew she was expecting screams and signs of rebellion, as every time she asked me to do something. But I simply pulled the letter away and said. “No.”

  “No?”  "No.“

  She sighed, but I knew it was part of her game. “I won’t try to convince you, Cameron.” I squinted. What was she preparing? “Don’t try to lie, mom, I know you will.” I sneered.

  “No, darling, I won’t convince you.” She made a smile. “I’ll force you.”

  I couldn’t talk to her anymore. Just being in the same room as her was a torture. I left the kitchen and took the direction of my room. I would avoid her few days, stay closed there until I couldn’t submit anymore. It was out of the question that I participated to that shit. For too many reasons, I couldn’t even send my file.

Reason 1: Dominic Schreave was as attracting as a mosquito. I wasn’t blind, I could see he was hot, but I had seen enough of him on TV to have a good idea of his personality, that I could sum up in one word: immature. Maybe he was nice… but he was the opposite of what I was looking for in a relationship.

Which led to reason 2: I don’t want a relationship. Of any kind. I gave into love once, I wouldn’t do it twice. Or at least not at that moment. It was too early. I needed stability and trust, how could have stability and trust when the guy was dating other girls, huh?

Reason 3: Becoming a royal? To stay locked in the palace all my life, following the decorum? No, thanks. I had my liberty, I kept it.

Reason 4: I was stupid. Not according to my IQ -I was even above the average apparently-, but being unable to write without making writing mistakes and taking twice or thrice more time than a normal person to read a text were not among the qualities wanted in a future queen. Sorry… not so sorry.

Reason 5: I got pregnant and decided to abort. Two things which should have -and still could- ledme to jail. An unpure daughter of Illéa… Media would love that, but not the royal family.

There were probably other ones, but my brain was too lazy to think of it on the moment.

I slammed the door of my bedroom angrily. I knew Mom knew why I couldn’t participate to the Selection, so why was she insisting so much? She was the first one to say I was stupid, so why would she want me with a crown on the head? I sighed and threw my sport bag on the floor. I would think about it once I would be under the shower.

A baby suddenly started crying. I turned around and saw my older brother, Pierce, holding his son. “He was finally sleeping!” He tried to look angry but the whisper broke that effect. He seemed rather hopeless. I took the baby in my arms. Honestly, it was harder and harder to see my nephew. Every time, I couldn’t help but thinking about what my baby would look like if… if I hadn’t kill it.

I shook my head and sighed. It wasn’t the moment to bring these memories back. “Why did you go to my room then? You knew I would come back!”

Pierce sighed. “He likes to sleep in your room at that hour. The light I guess.” He looked so tired. After all he had to raise a baby on his own, his wife being dead when she gave birth to Rory. When he decided to come back to live with us, he said it was because he couldn’t pay the apartment with one salary, but I knew it was actually because he couldn’t be alone. He felt better with his family around him, which was my total opposite. They were so oppressing, even mom and dad that I barely saw.

I calmed down Rory and gave him back to his father. I sat next to him on my bed. “Mom wants me to participate to the Selection.”

Pierce frowned. Ha, even for him it didn’t any make sense! “What? Really?”

“Yep.” I took the paper crown my ten-year-old sister, Amilia, made when the Selection had been announced and put it on my head. “Princess Cameron Schreave of Illéa!” I announced sarcastically. Even if I was wearing a real crown, I would look ridiculous anyway.

“It sounds weird.” Pierce shook his head. “Mom is totally insane.”

My second brother, Monroe, entered at that moment. “She’s not. She has a plan obviously.” Damn he had super ears or what? He was able to hear everything in this house.

He sat on my chair and crossed his arms. “What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.” Pierce answered for me. “If she doesn’t want to do it, she doesn’t do it. She’s 19, mom can’t force her.”

Monroe and I rolled our eyes. “As if it will be enough to stop her.” He watched Rory sleeping few seconds and suddenly raised his head to look my in the eye. “Cameron… you should accept and fill that stupid file.”

I almost yelled. My own brother was betraying me! What about our contract we made years ago to protect each other against mom? I rather took a deep breath and stared at him angrily. I noticed that for once Pierce had nothing to say. Monroe leaned. “Cam, mom has a good reason to make you do that.He saw my face and automatically added. “A good reason for her.” He cleared his throat. “She is as stubborn as you are, nothing will stop her.”

I shook my head. “I’ll just wait she gives up.”

“But she won’t! Certainly not for that!” He took my hand. “If you don’t accept now she’ll blackmail you. You know she won’t hesitate.”

I felt my face turned white. Maybe Monroe wasn’t so wrong. Mom could be dangerous… But no, I couldn’t do that. Not the Selection.

“Don’t try to convince me Monroe… I won’t do it.”

He sighed. “I would have tried.” He turned towards Pierce. “You won’t help me?”

“No, Monroe. She doesn’t want to do it. I don’t want her to do it either.” I could see they were having a silent discussion. Monroe finally sighed and stood up. “Please think of it Cam. Before she makes you regret it.” He said before leaving the room. He probably thought he socialized enough for the day. He didn’t feel comfortable with other people, even us. He considered he did what he had to do: warn me. Now he could go back to his room. I would like to have a life as easy as his.

It took mom two days. I was eating -again, I should celebrate that- when she interrupted my meal, shaking the letter in front of me.

“I guess you still don’t want to obey me.”

“I’ve never wanted to obey you. It won’t change today.”

I was her daughter, not her slave.

She sighed. “You don’t let me other choices, Cameron.” She handed me another letter, bigger than the first one. I frowned. I knew she was going to blackmail me, as Monroe warned me. But I was ready to fight back.

I underestimated her. Of course I did. I was so stupid. I realized it when I opened that letter and discovered a pic coming from an ultrasound. My ultrasound. I immediately teared up.

“I am pretty sure you remember the day you did this exam.” I wasn’t looking at her but I knew she was smiling, enjoying this moment. “You know, just before you had your abortion.”

I don’t know how I found the courage to look at her, but I did. “Yeah… you were with me that day.” I should maybe say that asking her help was the worst decision of my life. And I realize now it was. But on the moment, I was so desperate. My boyfriend disappeared, I was about to go to jail, my baby taken from me and forced to live as an Eight. I did what every girl would have done: I asked help to my mother. She found a doctor for me and even supported me. All of that was lies of course.

“I was… Which means I know everything. What day you did it, who is the father, who is the one who practiced the abortion… Everything.”

I squinted and crossed my arms. I knew what I did was extremely dangerous. “What is your point?”

“I helped you once. But now I won’t hesitate to denounce you.”

I dropped the ultrasound pic. “You’re totally mad! Only… only for a Selection?! Seriously, mom! Do you think I would make such a great queen to blackmail me like you do?!”

She scoffed. “You would be a dreadful queen, dear.”

Thanks for the love, mom.

“So why?!”

“To get a better position of course.” She said with a too soft voice. “Selected, even eliminated, find good matches. You would become the wife of a powerful Two, just by staying two days in the palace!”

She was nuts. She made all that plan… to get me married?!

“That’s all I ask you. Few days in the palace.. then you’ll receive a proposal.. and you’ll be a Two!”

She saw my grimace and pouted. “You would be an athlete. Finally you could practice sports professionally. That’s what you have always wanted Cameron.”

“Not the arranged marriage, no.” I wasn’t a object, something we could use whenever we wanted.

She let the file in front of me. “Because you think someone could marry you because he loves you? Certainly not. Why did he run away you think?”

She took a pen and put it next to the file. “It is your only chance to have a good life Cameron… think about it.” She took the ultrasound pic left on the floor, shook it in front of me a last time and disappeared in the corridor. I stared at the letter, feeling more empty than ever. I was torn between my independence and her cruel words. Cruel but true. I bit my bottom lip, keeping the tears away. I should have known she would use the abortion against me one day. She was a monster, she didn’t have any heart.

I didn’t know what to do. Refusing her offer meant jail… accepting meant jail. I was stuck.

Amilia suddenly entered and saw the letter in front of me. She jumped, excited. “You’re gonna do it? You’re gonna do the Selection?” She hugged me tightly. She wanted me to do it of course, but she was too sweet to even suggest it to me.

Amilia took the pen. “Can I fill the application for you? I wrote better than you.” She joked. She didn’t wait my answer and started writing my information. I looked at her. She was so happy, too happy to notice how overwhelmed I was. Suddenly I knew.

I was already in jail.

[voiceinwild-blog]

What will cure the U.S. addiction to war?

       What will cure the U.S. addiction to war?    

Kathy Kelly

31 July 2017                                                                    

We must redouble our efforts to stop the war makers from gaining the upper hand in our lives.

President Donald Trump and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, May 20, 2017, at the Royal Court Palace in Riyadh. Credit: Official White House Photo, Shealah Craighead via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

"I come and stand at every door But none shall hear my silent tread I knock and yet remain unseen."  

Nazim Hikmet, Hiroshima Child

At a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on July 18 2017, Republican Senator Todd Young asked officials if the ongoing war in Yemen would exacerbate the catastrophe developing there—one of four countries, along with Southern Sudan, Nigeria, and Somalia, which are set to lose 20 million people collectively this year from conflict-driven famine.

Yemen is being bombarded and blockaded using US-supplied weapons and vehicles by a regional coalition marshaled by Saudi Arabia, with US support. Yemen's near-famine conditions and attendant cholera outbreaks are so dire that a child dies there every ten minutes of preventable disease.

At the hearing, Young held aloft a photo of a World Food Program warehouse in Yemen which was destroyed in 2015. He asked David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program, to name the country responsible for the airstrike that demolished it. Beasley replied that the Saudi-led coalition blockading Yemen had destroyed the warehouse, along with the relief supplies it contained.  

A July 2016 Human Rights Watch report documented 13 civilian economic structures that were destroyed by Saudi coalition bombing between March 2015 and February 2016, including:

“Factories, commercial warehouses, a farm, and two power stations. These strikes killed 130 civilians and injured 171 more. The facilities hit by airstrikes produced, stored, or distributed goods for the civilian population including food, medicine, and electricity—items that even before the war were in short supply in Yemen, which is among the poorest countries in the Middle East. Collectively, the facilities employed over 2,500 people; following the attacks, many of the factories ended their production and hundreds of workers lost their livelihoods.”  

When asked about the Saudi coalition's destruction of four cranes needed to offload relief supplies in Yemen's port city of Hodeidah, Beasley confirmed that their loss had greatly impeded WFP efforts to deliver food and medicines. Young read from Beasley’s June 27 letter to the Saudi government—only the latest of multiple requests—in which he asked that the WFP be allowed to deliver replacement cranes. The WFP Director said that the Saudis had provided no reply.  Young then noted that, in the three weeks since this last letter had been sent, more than 3,000 Yemeni children had died of preventable, famine-related causes.

Medea Benjamin of the antiwar campaign Code Pink was at the hearing, and later thanked Young for rebuking the Saudi government’s imposition of a state of siege, plus the airstrikes that are preventing the delivery of food and medicine to Yemeni civilians. One day later, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported on a July 19 coalition airstrike in Yemen which killed 20 civilians—including women and children—while they were fleeing violence in their home province. The report claimed that more than two million internally displaced Yemenis have "fled elsewhere across Yemen since the beginning of the conflict, but … continue to be exposed to danger as the conflict has affected all of Yemen's mainland governorates."

On July 14, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed two amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would potentially end US participation in the Yemeni civil war. In the past, the White House has provided refueling and targeting assistance to the Saudi-led coalition without congressional authorization. Since October of 2016, the US has doubled the number of jet refueling maneuvers carried out with Saudi and United Arab Emirate jets. The Saudi and UAE jets fly over Yemen, drop bombs until they need to refuel, and then fly back to Saudi airspace where US jets perform mid-air refueling operations. Next, they circle back to Yemen and resume the bombing.

What can be done to end this seeming addiction to war?

In the summer of 2006, I joined peace campaigner Claudia Lefko at a small school that she had helped found in Amman, Jordan. The school served children whose families were refugees from the postwar chaos in Iraq. Many of the children had survived war, death threats and displacement. Lefko had worked with children in her hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, to prepare a gift for the Iraqis at the school. The gift consisted of strings of paper origami cranes, folded in memory of a Japanese child called Sadako who had died from radiation sickness after the bombing of her home city of Hiroshima in 1945.  

In her hospital bed (so the story goes), Sadako occupied her time by attempting to fold 1,000 paper cranes, a feat she hoped would earn her the granting of a special wish that no other child would ever suffer the same fate as those who had been killed and injured in Hiroshima. She succumbed too rapidly to complete the task herself, but other Japanese children who heard about her folded many thousands more. This story has been re-told for decades in innumerable places, making the delicate paper creations a symbol for peace throughout the world.

The Turkish writer Nazim Hikmet wrote a poem about Sadako which has since been set to music. Its words are on my mind today as I think of all the malnourished children from the countries of the terrible Four Famines, and from other conflict-torn, US-targeted countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. I think of their months and years of hunger. Their stories may have ended already during the first half of 2017. Hikmet writes:

"I need no fruit I need no rice

I need no sweets nor even bread

I ask for nothing for myself

For I am dead for I am dead."

The song of the “Hiroshima Child" imagines a child who comes and “stands at every door…unheard and unseen.” In reality, we, the living, can choose to approach the doors of elected representatives and of our neighbors, or we can stay at home. We can choose whether or not to be heard and seen.

Robert Naiman at Just Foreign Policy points out that many people don’t know that the House of Representatives has voted to prohibit US participation in the Saudi-led war in Yemen. So we must publicize the vote on social media, push for a House roll call vote on the Davidson-Nolan prohibitions on Defense Appropriation, and urge the Senate to pass the same provisions as the House.

I recognize that legislative activism at the heart of an empire addicted to war is a tool of limited use. But considering the impending disaster for which 2017 may well be remembered—as the worst famine year in post-WWII history—we don’t have the luxury to reject any of the tools and opportunities that are presented to us. I also personally oppose all defense appropriations and have refused all payment of federal income tax since 1980.

Billions, perhaps trillions of dollars will be spent to send weapons, weapon systems, fighter jets, ammunition, and military support to the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, fueling new arms races and raising the profits of US weapon makers. We must choose to stand at the doors of our leaders and of anyone else who might have influence over this situation, honoring past sacrifices and the innocent lives we were unable to save even as we redouble our efforts to stop the war makers from constantly gaining the upper hand in our lives.

We can never reverse the decisions to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we cannot prevent all of the dying that is set to come this fateful summer in the countries of the Four Famines. In her song, Sadako, long beyond saving even as she folded more paper cranes in her bed, doesn't ask us to erase her own terrible loss, but to achieve whatever change that we can, and to lose no more time in doing so:      

"All that I need is that for peace

You fight today you fight today

So that the children of this world

Can live and grow and laugh and play."

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Ex-Monk Erects a ‘Cathedral of Faith’ Brick by Brick, and Mostly Alone

By Raphael Minder, NY Times, April 17, 2017

MEJORADA DEL CAMPO, Spain--In February, Justo Gallego dug his own grave, literally, in the crypt of the church he has been building here, brick by brick, since the early 1960s.

Mr. Gallego, 91, also recently switched dwellings, moving from the nearby home of some relatives to the more spartan surroundings of his self-made temple. He wants to make certain he will die in the place that has become his life’s mission.

“This is where my vocation has taken me and this is where I’m prepared to suffer, just as Jesus Christ taught us to suffer for others,” said Mr. Gallego, as he threw wood onto a stove by his rudimentary bedroom, next to the altar, where he sleeps on a plank without a mattress.

Mr. Gallego might be ready to confront death, but some residents here worry about what will happen to his extraordinary project without him. Mr. Gallego has never received a building permit or any public financing, but he has managed to erect a striking landmark in this otherwise nondescript town of 23,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Madrid.

His ambitious undertaking is labeled the “Cathedral of Faith” on internet maps, even though it has received no official backing from officials of the Catholic Church. Flanked by two cloisters and crowned by an unfinished 125-foot-tall cupola, it attracts tourists on the weekend, helping lift the local economy.

“This man has built something incredible against all odds and turned it into a symbol of our town,” said Victor Morillo, a resident who can see the cupola from the balcony of his apartment. “The Town Hall should have done a lot more to help and should certainly not allow anything bad to happen to this cathedral after he dies.”

Mr. Gallego, however, is unmoved by this kind of support, just as he has been unshaken by past criticism of his project and his own personality, sometimes derided as that of an exalted former monk. He is also unfazed that he has never received any public financing, even in a country that is mostly Catholic and whose infrastructure has been heavily subsidized.

“I’ve not been building this to get money or fame, just as I’m not here to listen to people decide whether I’m mad or unique,” he said. “I’m fully responsible for my work and I’m not looking for the authorities to have any say.”

Mr. Gallego was born here in 1925, on the day of the town’s patron saint, the Virgin of Sorrows. At 27, he joined a monastery in the northern province of Soria, but was ordered to leave eight years later, after he caught tuberculosis and risked contaminating the other monks.

After recovering in a Madrid hospital, Mr. Gallego returned to his hometown, where he decided to turn a family plot of land into a place of worship, without the blessing of the Catholic Church.

He said that his project was an act of faith, motivated in part by his desire to make amends for the desecration he witnessed during the Spanish Civil War. During the war, “I saw the Communists destroy all the churches here, with people laughing and dancing in the ruins,” he said. “But when you believe, you can then also rebuild with your own hands a beautiful new place.”

Indeed, Mr. Gallego has put up most of the church himself, without any training as an architect or civil engineer, using recycled material ranging from food tins to misshapen bricks and other leftovers from local factories and construction sites.

The capitals of some of the church’s concrete pillars are made from secondhand car tires, painted gray to resemble the color of the concrete used for the pillar. Part of the roofing is still missing, but there are already frescoes on the walls.

Mr. Gallego has financed his work by selling family farmland, as well as through donations.

He has held religious ceremonies on the premises, but the ground has not been consecrated.

“Many members of the institutional church view him as a fanatic who shouldn’t be taken seriously, but I consider him an example for humanity,” said María Teresa Alonso, a retiree from a nearby town, who visits occasionally and has donated money to help Mr. Gallego. “They say faith can move mountains, but here we see that faith can also build an incredible cathedral.”

Mr. Gallego has received some informal support from members of the local clergy. “There have been complaints about him, but we support him in as far as we can,” said Pedro Luis Jiménez Langa, a parish priest in town. “It’s an exceptional work, and he’s a good man.”

With his health growing more fragile, Mr. Gallego has increasingly relied on friends and volunteers to help with construction. A local entrepreneur offered a crane to lift the cupola, while some admirers have donated religious sculptures and decorations, rather than money.

But nothing gets added without Mr. Gallego’s approval, particularly if it jars with the arches and other circular designs that he loves, which are loosely based on the Romanesque style.

“The only plan is made in my head, drawn day by day,” Mr. Gallego said, with a grin that revealed several missing teeth. “But Jesus Christ is the one who makes the real plans and decides what eventually should happen.”