The Bulgarian who ran to Granada with the circus

Belichko lives in Albuñol, speaks Spanish slowly, choosing each word with the care of someone who has learned the language by talking to the locals rather than attending classes. He has been in the village since 1995 and was the first foreigner to settle here. Now the village is home to 42 nationalities and he is the only Bulgarian left.

The story that brought him to Spain begins in 1989, when the Berlin Wall had just fallen and eastern Europe was beginning to open up to the West. Belichko was part of a group of circus artists who signed a contract with a Spanish circus. "We had a full programme: ten acts, some wild tigers, a whole show. A contract that nobody imagined would last a lifetime," he reflects.

The circus arrived in Valencia on 23 December. The first thing he remembers about Spain is the orange trees. "We were very surprised by the orange groves," he says smiling, adding: "and we realised that it was a different country here".

A few days after being in Valencia the circus director didn't pay them: "What he gave us was just enough to buy meat for the tigers, because they couldn't wait, each animal ate eight kilos of meat," he explains.

And in Spain in the early 1990s, meat in large quantities was not sold: "You had to buy live animals in the markets, for example a cow, a donkey, a horse... whatever there was and then you had to slaughter it yourself," Belichko says as he recalls how they went for months without being paid.

When the situation became untenable he left and found a contract for a few months in another circus and began a new job advertising it. He would put up posters in the streets and shop windows. whenever the circus arrived in a new town. Driving aound in his blue van and working nights while the towns slept. "I liked working in the circus even though it was a bitch of a life, but we had a good time, it was a lot of fun," he says.

When the contract ended, so did his visa to be able to work legally in Spain. The boss had promised to get him the papers he needed to be able to live and work legally in the country, bu the promise was never fulfilled, Belichko explains.

He eventually found another circus company, where he was given another promise of paper and which brought him to Albuñol in the summer of 1995. Something in the village spoke to him in a way that the other hundreds of places he had visited had not. He decided to give up woking for the circus and take other jobs in the agricultural sector, working in greenhouses and warehouses.

A difficult life

Belichko does not remember the exact day that he met his wife. He just remembers that he went to a local shop to buy something and that something happened with the woman behind the counter which he still can't quite put into words: "It seems to have been, as they say here, love at first sight," he says.

They dated for several months and at the end of 1996 they got married. They built a life together with what they had. Belichko did whatever job came his way while waiting to be able to get legal status in Spain. His wife found out she was pregnant but tragically had a miscarriage and the couple never had more children: "We lost our only child," Belichko says.

The years went by and he finally found work with the school bus company where he stayed until he retired. Then in 2015, his wife died of a heart attack. Since then Belichko has lived alone, missing his wife, in a house where there are memories on every wall and a photo album that he takes out to show when someone comes to visit.