Spanish priest who founded a ‘city’ for impoverished street youths and a circus, El Circo de Los Muchachos, in which they performed
Father Jesús Silva was the founder and driving force of a remarkable project in 1960s Spain to rescue street urchins from poverty and a life of crime by giving them their own “city republic” and financing it through the circus arts.
El Circo de Los Muchachos, with 100 boys and young men as amateur performers, was founded in 1965 by Padre Silva, a Jesuit priest and the most unlikely of impresarios. Smiling and bespectacled, he dedicated his life to changing for the good the lives of thousands of youngsters in Franco’s impoverished Spain. He became something of a personality in