The evening that Helios, a boy with leukemia, performed the Wizard King within the Madrid Parade | Madrid News | EUROtoday

Merche Domínguez drops her bag on the bottom among the many crowd of Nuevos Ministerios and from it come out, as if it had been Doraemon’s pocket, three packages wrapped with Corte Inglés paper and a few golden bows. Logically, the primary two kids who cross by her cease subsequent to the items and take an X-ray of Merche, maybe excited about the place this 57-year-old girl may have gotten so many items whether it is nonetheless 5:30 p.m. The little ones’ father, with a grim look on his face, drags them to the escalator. There, heading in direction of the floor, there’s a group of younger trumpeters to whom a number of meters forward the guards of the safety fence of the Three Kings Parade of Madrid this Saturday will make method nearly with bows.

When the parade has barely begun, the members of the Madrid City Council group think about that it’s nonetheless “too early to make calculations of attendance.” On the opposite hand, perched on prime of a float, Helios Hidalgo, 13, seems on the horizon of Paseo de la Castellana with glitter on his cheeks, observing the shocked faces, the exaggerated shouting, and is inspired to be somewhat extra concrete. :

—There will likely be roughly 5 million individuals.

On the evening of March 4, 2023, Helios Hidalgo entered the door of the La Paz Hospital in Madrid. It was Saturday. On the morning of Sunday, March 5, the physician on obligation sat with the kid in mattress and gave a reputation to his illnesses. He had kind T acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The boy listened attentively and requested all the things he may consider about what was coming to him. The information fell like unhealthy information that arrives with out anesthesia. “It was a blow. You will never be the same again,” says her mom, Vanesa Espada, 46 years outdated.

She, alongside together with her husband, Carlos Hidalgo, 47, determined from that second on to name a spade a spade and try, so far as attainable, to make sure that the lives of Helios, in addition to his brother Carlo, 10 years, “acquired a certain normality.” Vanesa, who works as a psychologist, believes that, within the journey that some of these “serious illnesses” entail, it’s important that households assist “naturalize it, validate and accompany the emotions—fear, anger, sadness.” —”.

“You have to tell them what is happening, adapted to their age. Try to make them feel safe and, above all, not feel alone,” he explains. “They need to find stimuli that take them out of their routine of admissions and hospital corridors. When they are older like Helios, when they have already lived a good and peaceful life, it is more difficult for them to adapt to that routine. “They need positive emotions,” says the lady as she fingers out sweet to the attendees.

That is why they accepted the assistance of the Pequeno Deseo Foundation—with which they participated for the primary time within the Three Wise Men’s Parade in Madrid—which is devoted to discovering kids with a low temper in almost 40 hospitals all through Spain. and to those that, after a number of interviews, attempt to give them the potential of experiencing one thing that they ask for and that they’re particularly enthusiastic about. Helios, to everybody’s shock, requested to fish within the open sea.

Horse mackerel and dolphins

“We were really surprised, we knew he liked it, but not that much. If I’m honest, we’re going to feed the fish, because we’re usually terrible at it. Except that day, in Benalmádena, there he caught 26 horse mackerel and we even saw dolphins,” remembers Carlos, whose head is bursting when the Burrito Sabanero begins enjoying on the float behind, the Amazon one. “If Bisbal makes a remix“Screw it,” they say from behind.

At the top of the float, Helios acts with leadership. Halfway through the route a rumor begins to spread that with that intensity of throwing candy, when they reach the Cibeles audience, there will be nothing left. “We have to stop!” the boy orders to cease the momentum of the remainder of the youngsters. The relaxation cease, for a minute, however the cravings get the higher of them. Helios decides to affix the chaos. “I am a Wizard King,” he defines himself.

He has a exact approach. Unlike the remainder, which throws handfuls of twenty jelly beans, Helios does it one after the other. According to him, he tries to attain within the plastic baggage that these within the first rows unfold out. With every shot, he leaves his wrist bent till he sees if he has scored or not. Helios performs as some extent guard within the youth ranks of Real Canoe. “When I see someone bigger I shoot at their chest, like it’s the backboard of the basket, to make sure it goes in,” he says.

Vanesa acknowledges that moods will not be one thing everlasting when the phrase “cancer” enters your life. “Once you receive the news, you never stop being alert. That exhausts you. Then, it is also true that joys, like today’s, are experienced much longer. It’s a cliché, but that’s how it is. I think you enjoy it twice as much because you are really aware that it is a good moment, something that maybe you didn’t know before,” he displays.

Christmas has been considerably turbulent. Helios caught a virus that led him to spend a number of days in La Paz. This yr he was in a position to return to the institute, the place he goes each day with a masks as a safety measure. You additionally can not trip together with your classmates on the bus throughout excursions, or change in the identical locker room. “

I think I’m going to be cured. Here you see me, in the most important parade in Spain according to what I have been told, with people who have gone through the same thing as me. It seems tremendous to me,” explains Helios. After a number of launches, he approaches once more as a result of “he still has something left to say”:

—I’ve to play the playing cards I’ve been dealt. I can not select them, I can not assist it. But how can I not battle.