Until a year ago, most residents of this city, perched in a valley two hours northwest of Madrid, would not dare to visit this part of town. The ghetto, known as Barrio de España, is inhabited by gypsies and farmers, most of whom moved to the city in search of work half a century ago.

Until last year, many of the makeshift houses of brick and adobe did not have running water. Montero used a cane to shuffle out of her house, painted yellow with waves of blue-tiled mosaic designs and a bright red door. Now, townspeople and tourists alike visit this neighborhood to gaze at, and snap photos of, the vibrantly decorated homes that combine the primary colors, dazzling mosaics and contemporary sculptures.

This was precisely what the European Social Fund and the city government of Valladolid had in mind when they enlisted a local artist and his foundation to create a project to improve living conditions and boost the economy of this marginalized neighborhood. Residents were asked whether they wanted their homes transformed into a collective piece of urban artwork. Only two or three families on Montero street chose not to participate. Local residents were trained and hired to do the reconstruction. After a year, when the first phase was finished, journalists and newscasters flocked to the vicinity and interviewed occupants of the newly baptized Barrio del Color, (Neighborhood of Color).

"I've been on TV," Montero said. She smiled, revealing toothless gums. "Some people come here and say our houses look like a dwarves' dwelling or a nightclub, but we are delighted," Hernandez said. On the corner is a charming plaza with park benches and trees reflecting the brilliant colors of the homes, and it does arouse the sensation of sitting in a scene on the page of a colorful storybook.

The tias (aunts), as elderly women are affectionately called in Spain, got ready to pose for another photo on their famous street. Montero hid her cane and Hernandez shed her white apron. "If my parents could lift their heads up from the grave and see the changes to their house, they'd roll over and die again from happiness," Hernandez said, and the old women let out a joyful laugh.

Cristóbal Gabarrón is the artist who designed and helped found this urban transformation generating community pride. His abstract paintings and sculptures have been conveying humanitarian messages on a grand scale to the global community for 17 years. Gabarrón, 56, seems to be perpetually percolating with thoughts to articulate. His social commentaries, which are rendered in paint, metal, ceramic, tile and glass, among other materials, have achieved an ongoing dialogue with a multitude of audiences and have won him countless prizes and other honors. A father and husband, Gabarrón is known as El Maestro to his friends, who say he is a virtual encyclopedia.

"The perception was to create an artwork transforming a negative reality. The objective was to make the people of the barrio feel proud of what they have, and so the city could commercialize a ghetto, turn it into the contrary, a place where people frequented." Gabarrón gaily recalled sharing his time and working with the residents who were often illiterate, and sometimes dangerous. "The people working with me never were protagonists, and when the TV crew interviewed them asking, 'And have you learned a lot with Gabarrón?'"

"This is marvelous because I never thought this would happen, but from now I'm an uncle with big balls," Gabarrón said.

They spoke in a manner that I found charming because they continued speaking naturally, as themselves.

Sitting among trees in the solitude of nature is what gives Gabarrón the tranquility he needs to invent. This warm, gregarious man says there is no one finite moment in which an artist is discovered. "You do something that is important, they can tell you it's important, but nothing happens," he said. "You have to complete many works to reach a prestige in this profession. It's not just about recognition. You have to continually create important pieces."

An only child, Gabarrón was born in 1945 during the Franco regime in the Mediterranean town of Mula. Some of his earliest memories, he said, include drawing figures in the sand with a stick. His parents moved to Valladolid when he was 6, and at the entrance of town, his father opened the only fountain-pen shop. Across from the store, the smell of grilled shrimp wafted out from a popular bar.

Meanwhile, he said, his father's tiny store, was permeated with the smell of ink, which Gabarrón helped his father mix each day after school. The store was a social hub where young Gabarrón listened to the customers' conversations as he blotted his ink-stained fingers onto thick paper, devising designs. Everyone was quick to notice this young boy's natural calling. Spain was war-torn and poor at that time, and even though his parents just managed to make ends meet, they gave him his first studio by emptying a closet-sized room for his work-space when he was 13. His teachers also recognized his artistic vocation, and his work adorned the hallways in his Catholic school.

Childhood friends say that Gabarrón was not a typical teenager, who chased after girls. Rather, he dedicated his time to producing art. At 18, serious, intense and mature for his years, Gabarrón walked into a local gallery holding his portfolio under his arm, he said. The owner was impressed and invited him to exhibit his works, the majority of which were sold at the show's opening. At the time, young men were required to complete their military service, which meant nine months in the barracks.

Gabarrón left his military post to set up an exhibition, a violation that could have landed him in prison. But he was charming, and witty and able to convince the officials to let him off the hook.

Gabarrón began traveling to Paris when he was 15. He did not know a soul when he arrived, he said, but instantly found a community of fellow artists from all over Europe. Gabarrón and his friends transported oranges in the early morning market to earn wages for each day's survival. After earning enough francs to eat for the day, they spent the afternoon painting. When one of his friends sold a painting, instead of buying something practical like food, he would throw a party for the crowd, he said.

It was in Paris, in May 1968, that Gabarrón went through a transformation like that of a caterpillar into a butterfly, he said. One afternoon, as he sat in a cafe with an Italian fellow he had met that morning, Gabarrón watched as busloads of French police swarmed a peaceful protest in the plaza across the way. The policemen were loaded down with helmets and shields. The protestors ran, cried, covered themselves and screamed as they were beaten mercilessly. Blood spilled across the plaza. Under Franco, Gabarrón was accustomed to the Spanish police, "Los Grises," beating and detaining peaceful protestors, but what he witnessed in Paris that afternoon was much more brutal.

His belief in marvelous Paris, a beacon that protected democracy, turned into utter disillusionment. At that moment, Gabarrón said, his world crumbled. His disillusionment led to depression.

"At that moment, I thought that painting didn't achieve anything," Gabarrón said. He felt that art had no real value in society, he said, and so he did not produce any paintings for a few months. When the depression lifted, like a fog, he was indelibly altered. Gabarrón painted his own death in three self-portraits, representing the death of thought, he said. "It was a transformation that was necessary for me to continue onward," he said. He also painted the "French May," which launched his name into the art world.

Back in Spain, Gabarrón met his muse during a fateful car accident on the road between Valladolid and Madrid. He was seriously injured in the crash when Rosa, a passenger in the car behind his, came to offer assistance. Gabarrón was in the hospital recovering from his operation and Rosa tended to him. She soon became his girlfriend. Three years later, when Gabarrón asked Rosa's father for her hand, he said, "You're an artist, but what is your work?" Gabarrón did not respond.

For the first few years, Gabarrón struggled to be true to his art while providing for his family. The couple had five children during the first seven years of their marriage. During those years, Gabarrón said, a doctor asked him to paint a blue work of a particular size to be hung above his sofa. Gabarrón refused the work even though he needed money. He could not sacrifice his artistic integrity by accepting limitations on his creative process. Fortunately, by 1975, he didn't have to. It was early in his career that the need for financial security no longer put restraints on his artistic freedom.

In 1985, the Italian film director, Roberts Roberto Fellini, saw Gabarrón's painting titled "Our Hope for Peace." As Gabarrón was working in his studio one afternoon, the housekeeper came in with a special-delivery envelope. It was a letter from the United Nations asking to use "A Hope for Peace" as the UN's commemorative poster for the 1986 "Year of Peace." Such an honor had been bestowed on only two Spanish artists before him, Miró and Dalí. After that he was commissioned to do huge installations for the Olympics in Barcelona, Kyoto and Atlanta. He did a commemorative painting for Amnesty International. In 2000 the UN asked him to create a work embodying notions of tolerance, racism, freedom and democracy for the commemorative poster of the UN Millennium Conference.

One canvas was not a sufficient amount of space to express the plethora of ideas he conjured up while he worked on the UN Millennium piece. So when he finished that, he spoke with the owner of an old palace that had been converted into a hotel and had an abandoned chapel. The owner agreed to let Gabarrón transform the chapel into a museum. Gabarrón worked for 15 months on the Millennium Chapel, which he describes as a non denominational homage to humanity.

The chapel was inaugurated only nine days after the events of September 11. On a crisp autumn day, the chirping birds and bristling trees alongside the chapel add to the aura of tranquility. A cement path with mosaic design inlaid leads to the large arching doorway, which appears to be a collage of wood but is metal, and in the middle is a blue whale-like figure representing early life on this planet. Three glass painted arches crown the door. Inside, the blue ceiling is illuminated by glass of the same color in the shape of a cross that spans the length of the chapel. One wall is divided into 16 abstract murals about humanity's past of errors. Its images hint at massacres, violations of nature, and a repressed, restricted freedom, held down by a cord-like kite. The opposing wall contains 16 murals depicting the artist's vision of hope and potential for humanity. Another wall contemplates the progression from birth to death with an umbilical cord that connects the different paintings.

The last wall is printed with a thousand green roosters. The roosters represent humanity, Maria Jose, the 23-year-old docent, explained to a crowd of 30 people visiting from Madrid. "Ah," the crowd whispered in a sigh of enlightenment. "No two roosters are the same, although they are the same form and the same color." Perplexed looks came over of the visitors' faces. "If you look closely you can see that the amount of green paint varies in tones and amount on each rooster, representing the different races of humanity," Maria Jose said. "Ah," the crowd murmured.

"The roosters are facing each other to signify how humans continually confront each other." The crowd is very pleased now. Mounted on the wall of a thousand green roosters is a large cross with an abstract human figure being crucified. This image represents the sacrifice of man, his sacrifice for his family, for his beliefs. It is an image of an imperfect human being.

"I wouldn't understand this chapel without the tour-everything is so post modern," one visitor exclaimed. "They say it is for all religions, but I only see Christian references here," another added. "What's here for the Muslims or the Jews?"

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the artist couple renowned for using real life as their canvas in great works such as the wrapping of the Reichstag, visited the Millennium Chapel shortly before its inauguration. "One of the exquisite parts was the ceiling," Christo said. "It gives the impression that it is daylight coming from that incredible luminous glass. But it is not. All the tonality of the landscape is synthesized into the frescoes."

As the crowd filed out of the chapel, 69-year-old Obdulía Martin turned her head for one last look at the chapel. "This inspires me to live a long time so I can see the changes," she said. "This gives me hope."