Ten years ago I woke up shivering in the backseat of a rusty Renault Clio on a side street in Barcelona.

No, I wasn’t on a road trip. That car was my bedroom, living room and closet. My shower was a public fountain. My alarm clock was the sound of garbage trucks.

I had lost my marketing job in Lisbon after the company collapsed overnight. Savings gone. Apartment gone. Pride still stubbornly there, so I packed my few things, drove to Barcelona and told myself I was “starting over”.

In reality, I was just a man hiding in a car with 20 euros in his pocket and no idea what came next.

That morning I did what I always did: washed my face in ice-cold water, tried not to make eye contact with anyone, and sat on a bench pretending to have somewhere to go. The city woke up around me – kids going to school, people grabbing coffee, tourists with cameras. Everyone had a place. I had a parking spot.

Then I saw them.

A line of street artists setting up along La Rambla: guitars, easels, a mime, a caricaturist. Watching them, something old and stubborn inside me moved. Because before I was “Miguel the marketing guy”, I was just Miguel, the kid who filled his notebooks with drawings instead of homework.

In the trunk of the Clio I still had a cheap sketchbook and a few pencils I’d thrown in “just in case”.

I walked back to the car, grabbed them, found a free spot near a fountain, sat down on the pavement and started to draw an elderly couple sharing a sandwich on a bench.

For the first time in months, my hands knew exactly what to do.

I forgot I was hungry. I forgot I smelled like the street. There was just the pencil, the paper, the deep wrinkles at the woman’s eyes when she smiled at her husband.

When I finally looked up, there were about fifteen people standing around me.

A woman whispered in English, “Look at his talent.”
A guy asked, “How long did that take you?”

Then a French woman stepped closer:
“Do you do portraits? How much?”

I had no plan, no price list, nothing. My brain screamed, Don’t mess this up. My mouth said, “Ten euros,” before I could stop it.

She laughed. “Too cheap. I’ll pay twenty for one of my husband and me.”

In three hours I drew her, some American students, a family from Italy. My fingers cramped, my back hurt, but I didn’t dare stop. When the sun started to go down, I counted the money.

140 euros.

I sat on the pavement, staring at the coins and notes, and for the first time in a long time I cried. Not from misery this time, but from relief. From the insane realisation that the thing I had buried for years – drawing – might actually save me.

That night I ate a hot meal in a tiny Portuguese restaurant in the Gothic Quarter. Bacalhau, potatoes, a glass of red wine. I probably looked crazy, wiping tears while chewing, but I didn’t care. For the first time in months I felt like a human being again, not just a problem society tries not to look at.

From there, my life didn’t magically become perfect. I still slept in the car. There were rainy days with no tourists, days when the police moved us on, days when my hands shook from hunger and nothing I drew looked right.

But people kept coming back.

A caricaturist named Carlos taught me street tricks: where to stand, how to talk to tourists, how to charge without apologising. I bought colour pencils, a small easel, a folding chair. Step by step my little “setup” started to look less like a homeless man on the floor and more like an artist’s corner.

Then one day an influencer with half a million followers sat in front of me.

I had no idea who she was. I just drew her, like every other face. She posted my portrait with a caption about “this incredible street artist in Barcelona who captured my soul in 20 minutes”.

Two days later my Instagram exploded. DMs from all over the world:
“Where can I find you?”
“Do you take commissions?”
“Can I book you for our honeymoon?”

A gallery owner named Javier appeared at my spot one afternoon and said the words I thought belonged to other people’s lives: “You’re good. Have you ever thought about exhibiting your work?”

The short version of what came after: I moved from the car into a tiny studio apartment. I opened a small studio in the back of Javier’s gallery. I worked myself half to death drawing portraits for people who’d only known me as “that guy from Instagram”.

A documentary team filmed my story: the car, the fountain, the first day on La Rambla. It went viral. Suddenly I wasn’t just an artist; I was “the homeless guy who made it”. Brands called. Conferences called. Money started coming in numbers I had never seen on my bank account.

But the real turning point wasn’t the money, or the blue tick on my profile, or seeing my face on a poster.

It was the first time I walked into a shelter to teach a free drawing class.

I saw people with the same empty eyes I had in that car. People who had been told in a thousand subtle ways that they no longer mattered. And for two hours, with cheap paper and dull pencils, I watched those eyes light up when they realised, “Hey, I’m actually good at this.”

That’s why I created the Lifelines Foundation – to give art classes, materials and hope to people in the exact place I came from. Today we’re in multiple cities, and I’m proud of the exhibitions, the grants, the success stories.

But I still go back to La Rambla.

Some Sundays I sit on the ground with my sketchbook, just like that first day. I put up a small sign: “Pay what you want. All goes to the foundation.” Some people recognise me, some don’t. Honestly, I love both.

Because every time I sit there and look up from my drawing to see a small crowd forming, I remember the man I was – hungry, scared, convinced he had failed at life.

And I want him to know: he was wrong.

If you had met me back then, asleep in that car with 20 euros and a broken career, would you have told me to go back to “something safe”… or to sit on the pavement and draw anyway?

Tell me honestly in the comments: would you dare bet everything on a talent you almost forgot you had?