Omar Montes goes up the stairs of a flat building in the middle of the afternoon. She goes in search of those “beautiful people” who are her lifelong neighbors. In each hand he carries a shopping bag full of basic necessities. He wears a tracksuit, booties and a Louis Vuitton mask. In the car park he has left the Mercedes 220 AMG with which he drives the narrow streets of the Pan Bendito neighborhood, one of the most humble in Madrid. He rings the bell of one of the apartments and, when the door opens, Carlos Sánchez appears, a 38-year-old delivery man who a decade ago was a celebrity in the neighborhood for playing at Rayo Vallecano.
Sánchez is unemployed and has two daughters. Omar or one of the ten friends who work for him (“the crew”) brings him a purchase of the supermarket every week. The gesture is repeated with dozens of people from all over the neighborhood. There are people who call him to ask for help now because they are hungry. He learns about the dramatic situation of others through radio radio. Then, without warning, he shows up on the landing and bangs on the door.
If the king of Blessed Bread knocks, it opens.
“What a shame!” Says Carlos when Omar enters the kitchen to leave the bags.
Omar, as a child, saw Carlos as a hero. The boy who had left the neighborhood, when in the nineties it was a place for junkies and unemployed, to measure up to the rest of the world without any complex. He knows that he is now a father of a family that goes through difficulties, like many other Spaniards. “A healthy, exemplary uncle, who cannot go out and seek life.”
“It occurred to him to help me.” You know I pass them hard.
“I don’t need you to send me a message.” I take directly and boom, surprise, “explains Omar.
“He has triumphed in life and here he has stayed,” Carlos concedes.
-In the neighborhood forever, brother.
Montes, who began to succeed in the music world in 2015 with rap, trap, and reggaeton, lives in the same flat as he did 31 years ago. His mother, María de los Ángeles, a 48-year-old housewife, lived here, along with his father, Ismael, a 50-year-old Army marine. Here they dressed in ripped pants a salao chubby. Here’s a wardrobe with hundreds of sneakers, jewelry, and even a huge Gucci wardrobe. Here he came back hurt by the mocking laughter of some schoolmates. Here he returned after each boxing training. Here is the medal of the Spanish boxing champion. Here you have 11 platinum records and three gold ones. Here you have now a nicknamed Lamborghini The hurricane, a Mercedes C220 and even a Ricky, an anteater. “In my life, circumstances changed. I am still simpler than a swing, but if I used to wear a Carrefour tracksuit before, now I go with a branded one ”.
One day in March, when the abstract bug imposed telework and sent others home to just watch TV, he received a message on his Instagram account from a young man in the neighborhood. “Omar, we need food, that my father has become unemployed.” The next day he entered the Alcampo and presented himself with bags of food on his doorstep. Days later, the messages multiplied. “Now I receive hundreds and hundreds a day. They are people who really need it. “
Such was the avalanche, that he summoned his four best friends, Salcedo, Oscar, Casares and Cookie. A gang of thirty-some-year-old Montes salaries. “The Illuminati team. That is my team. ”
– You have a good colleague, right?
– We can not complain.
These kids go out every day to distribute food in a place where the average income does not reach 20,000 euros. Everything goes to Montes’s account. “I do it because, if I am number one in music today, I owe it to God. The way I have to thank you is to give what I have to those who need it most. Everything I spend is always returned to me. I get a new song, it sticks in people, I get a skit on the other side ”. The artist has patented a concept, the martyr life, to refer to the bad life, the one suffered, the one he had and does not want to have again. Although the term can be used in any context, even mean the opposite. Modern life is a labyrinth.
Omar is singing when they go to the supermarket. Drag a cart through the corridors of the Alcampo. He asks two of his colleagues to fill them with vegetables, juice, spaghetti, cereals, meat. No white markings. Only the best. “As if it were for me. And no dirty things. You have to look for people’s health. Balanced food. Now that we don’t go out it’s important, if we don’t get like balls. ”
―Catch rice, which is very helpful.
Omar turns dog years. He has lived for seven. In August 2018, a teenage boy was crossed in the Las Callejuelas neighborhood of San Fernando. Come, what The shrimp They want to say something to you, ”said the boy. Montes had gone to the bay of Cádiz with the intention of recording a video clip. Hearing that, he thought it was a joke from Cádiz. Half an hour later, he opened the door to the room where the voice of flamenco lived. Camarón’s daughters prepared a barbecue for him, picked up the guitars, more neighbors, more family, one cante, another arrived. The art.
The next day, the three of them recorded a video clip of the version I am gipsy below the bronze statue of Shrimp. They dressed in white linen shirts. They took advantage of that hot summer fair day. They got into bumper cars. They rode at the witch train fairground attraction. There they sang I like to taste the grass, the good grass to the rhythm of the cañí rhythm. At the end of the video clip, a silence of a few seconds is heard. A heartbreaking voice breaks out with force: “They say that Jesus was a gypsy, right? I don’t doubt it, go. ” Shrimp, of course.
Two years later, the man from Madrid who accompanied The shrimp has 3.5 million listeners per month on Spotify; more than Camarón himself, Joaquín Sabina, Manuel Carrasco and Julio Iglesias. Now, in the midst of the pandemic and probably at the height of a musical career growing on the asphalt of one of the most humble neighborhoods in Madrid, Omar Montes is still here, in the Pan Bendito neighborhood.
And there he gives everything, bare chest. Neighbor to neighbor. Her next stop this afternoon is the home of Juani Rodríguez, a 60-year-old cleaner who is going through a delicate moment. They no longer call her from the offices or from the houses she used to clean. “Hello, nice one,” Juani receives the singer. The lady has made him a “roll” that he gives him wrapped in a paper napkin. Omar says that Juani “is a delicacy”. Juani that Omar is “a charm”. “I love you, I love you,” she repeats. Juani’s husband Ángel watches television in the living room. “Angel, say hello to Omar,” asks his wife. Angel raises his hand with the same face of enthusiasm that would be if they put the prod on him. Juani enthusiastically followed Omar’s participation in Big Brother and in Survivors, where he lost 13 kilos to win the contest. Now she has it in front of her, present in her kitchen, with a bun baked by her in her hand. It makes you happy.
It is time to collect for Omar, after an afternoon giving volts. Two teenagers smoke a joint in the doorway of their building without saying a word. A voice is heard through the telephone:
“Andy, climb up.” You’ve come down without a mask!
Omar stares at the metallic box from which the voice arises, and answers:
―The Andy isn’t down yet …
A few seconds later, Andy opens the portal and finds Omar talking to his mother on the phone. He imagines that it is and, without paying attention, he joins the two boys with a lost look. Now it’s a crew of three.
Omar sees it very clearly:
―He was given the martyr’s life and was caught.
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