There did not seem to be a way to get there. No train connection, and the one and only bus connection arrived in the afternoon, too late for when I was expected. I resorted to calling for a taxi from the closest city. Even so, the driver had never heard of the town to which I was asking him to drive me.
That might be understandable, when one considers the size of that town. The number of people is listed officially as less than 200, but it appears to be even lower. There is hardly anyone to be seen on the streets, regardless of time of day. It’s a village in the middle of a seemingly endless, flat expanse of wheat fields.

Back in the 20th Century, when Francisco Franco was in power, the goal of his ruling party was to populate the countryside with peasant farmers, each with a small but adequate plot of land. This ideal was not shared by the actual population itself, which as soon as it could, migrated to cities such as Barcelona and Bilbao, in search of a better life. Increased mechanization also steadily decreased the number of people required to work in agriculture. The result now throughout Spain, is a large number of depopulated towns. The houses here in this town, I am told, are frequently inherited and kept by people who live and work most of the time in cities like Madrid. Those that remain seem to be mostly of an impressively advanced age. As a result of the small population, the town cannot support a pharmacy, or clinic, or ATM, or supermarket, or even a church service. It does have a small food market, and a few bars and four pilgrim accommodations, called albergues. The reason there are albergues here at all is that this is the first town of any description in 20 km from the previous town.

I arrived at the albergue, which is a 350-year-old former rectory. The associated church is long since gone. I had stayed at the albergue 2 years before when walking the camino, and enjoyed the atmosphere there. As before, fast-swooping, twittering birds darted in and out of the eaves above. I later identified them as swifts. I met the two other hospitaleras. They were very effusive and friendly. One is from Spain and the other from Brazil. As it happens, neither speaks English, and my Spanish is still a work in progress. However it transpired that one had studied French in school, as I had, and we ended up using that language to communicate. The other hospitaleras from the previous period were still there, but were sick, and withdrew to their rooms as soon as possible. So there was not much of a chance for a transfer of information regarding how to run the various operations at the albergue. We therefore needed to resolve questions and issues as they arose.

First day as hospitalero

We get phone calls from people requesting to make a reservation. I explain that this type of accomodation, called a donativo, does not take reservations. People are required to arrive in person. This is in keeping with the tradition of such places on the Camino de Santiago.

By late morning, people have arrived, and there is a line of backpacks outside the door. This is how the pilgrims self-organize in terms of getting a place in the albergue. In the meantime we have made a shopping trip to the nearest supermarket, which is in a neighboring town, We somehow fit four shopping-carts-worth of food into a tiny car, along with ourselves.

We have a sign on the door to the effect that we open the door at 1:30 PM. But before that, as we are getting ready, someone pushes in through the heavy 350-year-old door, letting in the glare and heat from outside. It turns out to be an older French gentleman who seems somewhat confused and may be suffering from heat exhaustion. We give him some cold water with lemon to drink.

When we finally do open the door, the pilgrims enter in an orderly fashion. Even though they may be tired, overheated, hungry and dehydrated, and somewhat worried about finding a bed for themselves here, the pilgrims are almost without exception patient, calm, and polite. For our part we try to take time to welcome each one and find something special about them and yet keep the registration line moving quickly.

Big Night

One afternoon, there were already about 25 pilgrims at the start of check-in . The question came up as to what is the maximum number of pilgrims that we can accommodate.
The answer was not as simple as expected. We had not actually gotten that information from the previous hospitalero group. We go off and quickly count beds in the dormitory rooms. We can see from the line at registration that we are going to exceed that number. The hospitalero/as have each been sleeping in separate rooms, which have additional beds in them. We kick ourselves out of those rooms, and give them over to pilgrims, which gives us more beds available overall. Soon we see that we will overflow this number as well. One hospitalera says that this is where we should say that we are full. I point out something in a general information letter we had received, which states that, if at all possible, we should not “leave anyone on the street”. We hear that the other (private) albergues in town are full. We do have a quantity of mattresses in a back room. Thus, we fill that room with those. Still more are arriving though. We have one more room in which we could place mattresses, but another hospitalera says that we should not do that, because it is used as a chapel. I send a message to the local person in charge and get the go-ahead to do that as well.
With so many people, we have a greater variety of activities in the afternoon and evening. Some of the younger pilgrims have sufficient energy after their long hike, to give each other salsa lessons in the patio area. Meanwhile another young man (from France, and who is a singer-songwriter), upon finding a guitar here, gives an impromptu concert inside.

Dinner for 51

This night I get to be the chef, with some help from other hospitaleras, and pilgrims.

We don’t really know how many people we are cooking for. So, I have a look at the registration sheet at about 4 PM, make an estimate, and scale the recipe from that.

I have a recipe with lentils, tortellini, tomatoes, and spinach, which I think should work well. It presents no issues for those that are vegetarian yet has enough protein.

We have a deadline of 7PM when the pilgrims come into the dining room and we should start serving. I can start cooking at 5PM when the pilgrims help with chopping the onions and garlic.

We find it very hard to light the stove burners, and in the end can only get one burner going. I suspect that the gas pressure might be an issue, but we can’t get to agreement on trying to fix that right now.

Everything goes into one giant pot. 6 PM and 6:30 PM go by, the lentils have not gotten much softer. I had bought cans of whole tomatoes, instead of diced, because they make for a nicer texture than the diced ones. But that does mean that we must empty all the cans into bowls and attack the individual tomatoes with mixing utensils, in order to break them up, which takes some time.
7 PM is approaching and the lentils are still too hard. Nevertheless, it is time to add the spinach. We had bought packages of frozen spinach. I had confidently assured the others that the frozen bricks would unfreeze as soon as they were dumped into the pot. Instead, they remain stubbornly frozen, like a flotilla of green icebergs. There is nothing for it but to start smashing them in the boiling pot, with our serving spoons, to break them up.

Meanwhile, Some Italians have found the guitar and have started singing outside the window of the kitchen. It gets to be 7PM . As it turns out there is a bit more time for cooking, because we start with a welcome, introductions, and then serve salad and wine. In the end, we can serve the meal without any delay, and the pilgrims are very complimentary and effusive in their thanks.

Expect the World

I got to chat with and get to know people from many different countries, such as Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, PRC, Brazil, Guatemala, Hungary, the USA and Canada .

I appreciated the people who came to hear me play guitar in the chapel each evening, and the energy of the young people who happily covered 50km a day, and those who shared their heartfelt stories at the sharing circle.

I got to hear tales from world travelers, for example exploring the north in Canada, Alaska, Iceland, and Greenland, living in an ashram in India , and trekking monthslong through South America.

I had the opportunity to help pilgrims in many , small ways, such as …

• helping an injured man from Brittany find an albergue for the next day which was not too far away.
• Help an Australian man w/ no cash, get access to some (cab driver as ATM!)
• call a taxi for a group of Canadians who had had to backtrack to find beds
• provide ice and stock first aid supplies for those who needed them.

This town would not be a sightseeing destination. There are no sights.
What is special here, are all the interactions between people. And those connections don’t really show up in photos.