Xisco and Marc, a relationship built through play

Xisco was four years old when he started going to Espiral, an organisation dedicated to equality, youth and the family, which, as part of the CaixaProinfancia programme of the ”la Caixa” Foundation, focuses on child development through play in order to facilitate the conciliation of families with limited resources. It was there that he met Marc, the monitor who, as he grew up, inspired him to also become a monitor and support children between the ages of four and seven who, like him, know what it’s like to have no one to play with.

Play is taken very seriously at Espiral, a child, youth and family welfare organisation that works to promote equal opportunities by promoting quality leisure and educational spaces for young people who do not have them in their family and social environment. 

In 2013, this association launched the CiberCaixa pilot programme, a leisure space for children at risk of exclusion in the El Arenal neighbourhood (Palma), and today it has expanded to other tourist enclaves with a lack of services for the local working population, especially for minors.

Marc, Espiral’s socio-educational coordinator, recalls that at the time there were those who underestimated the importance of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion having something as simple as a space and time to have fun. “They said that what we had was nothing more than a few games.”

But time has shown that those ‘few games’ were in fact a whole programme of leisure and education in free time: “They’ve been a fundamental tool for the El Arenal neighbourhood.” In this neighbourhood, many parents work long hours during the summer season to attend to the waves of tourists that invade the streets, while in winter there is hardly any work and the streets are deserted.

In this context, the work of Espiral helps to address two of the difficulties faced by families – the work-life balance and the lack of economic resources – by offering children a space where many other issues can be addressed through play, such as “working on routines, resolving conflicts or teaching them to regulate their emotions”, as Marc sums it up.

Xisco was one of the first participants in the programme. “I started going when I was four years old. Until then, when my mother couldn’t look after me because she went out to work, I stayed at home. I remember long afternoons of boredom because my father isn’t one to go out much, and my brother, who’s older, would do his own thing. In Espiral, on the other hand, I had a good time. This is where I learned to have fun and where I made my first friends.”

Today he could not imagine his life without Espiral, but the beginnings were not easy. The tutors remember a rebellious kid who, during the summer camps, would grab his suitcase and want to go home. “I would short-circuit,” admits Xisco.

However, he followed the advice of the tutors and found a space to play and to train, but he also found young adults who were a role model for him. When he was a child, his immediate point of reference was Marta Mas, his tutor, with whom he still chats from time to time on social media, and in recent years it has been Marc Ferrer Gelabert, whom he considers one of the mainstays in his transition to adulthood.

As Marc himself explains, Xisco stopped attending CaixaProinfancia activities when he grew up because he didn’t feel comfortable. But he came back as soon as a programme designed for young people, Tienes Talento, was launched.

It was then that Xisco began to show interest in working as a tutor himself. He was not yet old enough to be trained (he was 15), but he was able to start his role as a volunteer in the children’s summer camps. He helped the tutors, who treated him as one of their own. And without having the same responsibilities, he was able to learn what he needed to do. “At first I signed up because I didn’t want to stop going to Espiral,” Xisco recalls, “but I liked it and I repeated. In fact, I repeated so much that I finally found my vocation there. I remember saying to myself: ‘I want to be a tutor’.”

Xisco worked hard and today he has been rewarded. He has passed the tutor course and his work experience has been recognised thanks to his voluntary work with the association.

Now Xisco, full of enthusiasm, works with children from four to seven years old, just as he was four years old when he started going to Espiral. And just as he found a point of reference in Marc, he also hopes to become a point of reference for other children. “I do everything I can to make them smile because I know what it feels like to be stuck at home all day with no one to play with.”

Xisco and Marc’s story is part of the documentary project Life stories, 14 stories of overcoming adversity which gives a voice to people at risk of exclusion who share their experiences in order to raise public awareness.