I once saw a picture of Pedro Ballester – Pedrito, as I like to call him - in a church in Seville.

And I thought: "And who is this new saint? He has such a nice face! So I decided to take his prayercard and I kept it as a bookmark in a novel I was reading at the time, entitled "In the Heart of England" by Jonathan Coe.

For several weeks, months, we had been waiting at my construction company for the conditions of connection from a water company. The negotiations were proving fruitless, desperate, tedious, exhausting in every way, and the urbanisation project we were working on was blocked for the time being until we received the long-awaited connection permit from the aforementioned water company.

One night at home, while reading that book, I came across Pedrito's prayercard, with his clear gaze and his genuine smile. I thought that as he had started studying Chemical Engineering he would probably understand better the personality of the technicians and engineers of the water company who were making me suffer so much. So I decided to pray the prayercard of Pedrito, at least once a day, until my professional problem was unblocked.

On the third or fourth day of saying the Pedrito prayer, I called at random, without thinking, the only telephone number I had for the water engineer, who was not in the habit of answering calls, after having checked it countless times.

And, at last, someone answered on the other end of the phone. It was the engineer in charge of my issue. As I introduced myself, he apologised for the delay and said: "I'll send you the certificate today". And within ten minutes I received an email with the much-desired "certificate" that allowed us to continue with our urbanisation project.

Without a doubt, Pedrito did his thing: In the heart of a paradise in Spain, where so many Englishmen have gone to live; and in the heart of that colleague of his, an engineer from the water company, who I don't know why he unblocked my issue in just ten minutes.

NN (Seville, Spain)

19 October 2022