The legacy of Lolo, the person who put a complete neighborhood of Seville to train: “He has taken many individuals off the road”

Lolo’s story is the story of Pino Montano, a working-class neighborhood in Seville constructed on work. That’s why when on Tuesday, June 27, the neighbors came upon that he had died of a coronary heart assault, one thing died with him within the neighborhood. Now they need to get it again and ask {that a} sq. be named after him… the sq. the place he arrange his gymnasium about 25 years in the past.

Since 1996, Lolo has run one of many first gyms within the neighborhood. Several generations have handed via his machines and his recommendation, however that was far more than train. Lolo went out into the road and sought to draw younger individuals to maintain them away from vices… In this manner, she step by step turned a logo for the neighborhood.

“He has taken many individuals off the road and even off medication by encouraging them to play sports activities,” says David Tirado, considered one of his associates who’s mourning his loss at present, “however he additionally turned to the aged so they might train.” Thanks to Lolo, half the neighborhood discovered a pastime in sports activities that modified their lives.

“He has helped every kind of individuals,” says Ángel, Lolo’s brother-in-law, “individuals with bodily accidents and a few very difficult ones additionally got here to his gymnasium.” But Lolo at all times discovered a approach to enhance. “He was at all times on prime of individuals,” says his brother-in-law, and that closeness is what made him so beloved.

Collection of signatures

His household was the gymnasium and that is the place he picked up anybody who wanted assist. “He was a really particular individual,” says David, and proof of that is how Pino Montano has turned to him. For greater than per week, signatures have been collected in outlets all through the neighborhood in order that the Seville City Council acknowledges his work.

“Lolo has been a caring individual and devoted to his neighborhood, particularly with younger individuals and adolescents,” says the doc that each one the residents are signing, “for that reason, after his unhappy dying, we need to request that the intersection between Alfareros and Alfareros streets be labeled Plumbers with the identify of Plaza Lolo Laocconte”.

Lolo on the door of his gymnasium.NIUS

Some have additionally requested {that a} mural be made with their picture and others ask that the hip hop group SFDK, which can also be from Pino Montano, compose a tune for them… Requests from a neighborhood that also doesn’t fairly imagine that considered one of its best-known neighbors have handed away at simply over 50 years of age.

“We did not anticipate it,” says David, who remembers how Lolo would nonetheless go operating early each morning after which go to work. The day earlier than he died, he uploaded his final video to Instagram, by which he wrote a sentence over photos of his gymnasium: “Only the weak surrender,” stated the person who fought to make himself stronger, Pino Montano.

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