Heading for the same destination. Two roads to Santiago de Compostela, near Caldas de Reis, Galicia.

In the distant past, most pilgrims walked the Camino as an act of religious devotion, ritual penance or thanksgiving. Perhaps they were searching for remission of sins or paying off a moral debt. Maybe some believed that the travails of the walk tempered their souls in preparation for the rewards of a vividly imagined afterlife. Perhaps pilgrimage was a seasonal thing, something you did because winter had melted away and the restlessness of spring was tingling in your feet.

Today these rationales still propel some pilgrims. As Emmy and I walked the Via Portugues, we bobbed for a time in the wash from a group of earnest Spanish pilgrims. There were about a dozen of them: elderly women rolling along in black dresses and black stockings with snow-white Nike shoes; chattery, lip-sticked housewives; cheerful men with waistlines as lumpy as their backpacks; and several children making occasional watchful attempts at naughtiness. (One of the children was an African boy about 10 years old – probably a newly arrived orphan refugee – who couldn’t speak much Spanish and whose big eyes seemed filled with loneliness and bewilderment.) The party managed to combine solemnity with ebullience. They carried aloft a small cross on the end of a pole, and as they progressed they recited Hail Marys, sang hymns, thumbed their rosary beads, and knelt in roadside prayer.

But they were exceptions. In one way or another most of the pilgrims we met seemed to be… what is the right word… escapees? They kept their religious motivations (if they had any) to themselves but many walked with a kind of single-minded intensity, grunting and puffing with the clenched determination of marathon runners. Pre-Camino, they had probably been living a life that was regimented, stressed, noisy, cramped, fraught, compromised. They were hounded by a reality that grabbed them and bullied them, constricted their chests and glared relentlessly into their faces. On the Camino they were eager for an experience that would lift this weight of the everyday from them. To that extent they were “religious”.

In their book The Year We Seized the Day, Australian pilgrims Elizabeth Best and Colin Bowles report on their Camino experience. “It’s taken a week but – aware now of my solitary purpose – the urgency has finally left my feet. There are no bills to pay today, no calls to make, errands to run, traffic to battle, friends to meet or appointments to keep. But there is much work to be done. And it all revolves around the same four threads woven throughout every day: food, water, health and shelter. The life of a pilgrim is a life stripped bare, reduced to the essentials and nothing more.” [p.2]

Another Australian writes “Pilgrimage is about letting go of so many of the taken-for-granted props we have grown to depend on — cars and buses and trains to carry you from one place to another; the knowledge of where you will sleep this night; the ready availability of clothes and food. The journey of a pilgrim can depend on none of these. (“Strange encounters on the Spanish Camino” Tony Doherty Eureka Street 14/10/2009 http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=15731)

Irreconcilable cultures? The Camino passes under a freeway between Ponte de Lima and Rubiaes in northern Portugal. (If you look closely you can see the yellow arrows of  the Camino roughly painted on the pillar at front right. Very symbolic!)

Jane Christmas, a Canadian, wrote “The idea of a pilgrimage – it has such a Chaucerian ring – was irresistable. It evokes a noble challenge, a test of one’s faith on a harsh, unknown, ancient path, the sort of pursuit that taps the primal urge to wander with intense curiosity. The Camino seemed a logical, albeit extreme, next step in my reconciliation with Mother Nature. All I needed was a backpack of belongings, strong legs and boundless enthusiasm. Check. Check. Check.” (What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim, p.7)

There is a kind of excited innocence, and sometimes a scarcely concealed yearning, in these observations. They communicate a vision of the Camino as a back-to-basics path of pre-modern simplicity, a bucolic idyll speckled with antique buildings and beaming companions. Certainly this image is right up front in John Brierly’s canonical guides to the Camino pilgrimage routes – little books that almost all English-speaking pilgrims seem to carry (certainly we did). For example, Brierly greets woodland paths and country roads lyrically and contrasts them with the harshness and danger of asphalt highways.

A truck passes over the Camino path. It is probably carrying the necessities of life that pilgrims must consume in order to keep walking.

“We now have our first glorious day where natural paths account for over half the route and there are no main roads at all.” (Camino Portugues p.132) “Most of this stage is along quiet country roads and woodland paths that follow the lovely Rio Louro valley. There is good shade and several drinking fonts along the way. The challenge today is the stretch of main road both entering and leaving the industrial town of Porrino and the slog through its industrial estates.” (Camino Portugues p.148)

For Brierly and, I suspect, for most pilgrims, walking the Camino is an exercise in the hope of redemption, a redemption that is beyond our grasp on the traffic-fraught highway of our ordinary lives. “We have a sacred contract, a divine function, and a reason why we came here. Perhaps your calling to go on pilgrimage will be the opportunity to find out what the purpose is and to provide the necessary space to re-orientate your life towards its fulfilment.” (Camino Portugues p.9) “And so, like a latter day Rip van Winkle we rise to dust off our boots and join the merry band of pilgrims making their way through the welcoming beauty and peace of northern Portugal to the city of St. James in neighbouring Galicia. You will meet other wayfarers and the native folk whose lands you pass over, but above all you may meet your Self, and that may make all the difference.” (Camino Portugues p.18)

Souvenir staves, shells and water gourds… just 11 euros per set in a souvenir shop in Tuy on the Spain-Portugal border.

Unfortunately for the integrity of this vision, the great python of the tourist industry has wound its coils around the Camino pilgrimage and is squeezing hard. Its jaws are already clamped over the city of Santiago de Compostela and it is sucking in the roads that lead to the city. Slowly the liminal innocence of the pilgrimage is being gulped down, helped along by peristaltic waves of seasonal enthusiasm generated by the tourist industry, the church, and supportive government policy. Tim Moore, an American who walked the Via Frances with a donkey, catches this half-ingested – half spiritual, half self indulgent – quality with sardonic accuracy. “… [walking the Camino] was the search for something beyond the typical tourist routine, an antidote to the vacuous consumerism of contemporary travel. A trip to the moral high ground – I hear the view’s excellent up there. A trip purged of the empty decadence that characterised most foreign trips, yet still demanded alcoholic indulgence in the name of historical authenticity. A holiday that wasn’t a holiday, even though it involved going to Spain. A journey of transcendental discovery that was also a stiff but sensible aerobic challenge, and whose inherent asceticism had the happy side benefit of economy. A medieval tale retold for our times but at 1350 prices.” (Spanish Steps 2005, p.5)

The fact is, the Camino cannot be disentangled from the lifestyle it is supposed to reproach. Its romanticised “otherness” is a delusion. The despised asphalt highway carries the food that pilgrims eat, the materials that build albergues and hotels, the buses that whisk staff to the airports that pilgrims use, the vans that run sherpa services for pilgrims, the trucks that deliver souvenirs to the shops of Santiago de Compostela. To be blunt, it is this “degraded” world of modern commerce that makes mass pilgrimage possible. There is no return to a medieval past, there is no genuine stripped-down simplicity, except in the imagination of pilgrims determined to shut out reality and romanticise their walk. Today the Camino pilgrimage is in a symbiotic embrace with the economy of northern Spain. The two infuse each other and give momentum to each other. They are Siamese twins with a single heart.

The cathedral of Santiago records the number of compostela certificates issued to pilgrims who complete the pilgrimage. The statistics show that pilgrim numbers have been rising steadily since the 1980s. Last year there were 272,000 arrivals at the cathedral, though 2010 was a Holy Year when higher numbers than usual walked the Way. The current year 2011 will probably see close to 200,000 arrivals, down from last year but still a very big number and well up on the 146,000 of 2009. These multitudes have to be sheltered and fed in the small towns and villages they pass through. As Tony Kevin says: “… the economic value of the pilgrimage in encouraging remote-area tourism and bringing more economic activity into isolated villages [has been] accepted. Of course, the pilgrimage has wider long-term benefits for Spanish tourism: walkers on the camino may not be big spenders, but they may return in later years with their families for more conventional holidays in Spain.” (Walking the Camino p.39)

Hungry pilgrims who like to eat well (like Emmy and me, for example) keep countless local restaurants alive.

And the commercial momentum of the Camino pilgrimage is flowing out across the borders of Spain. In scores of cities across the world young women in shiny high-heels, and young men wrapped in the fragrance of after-shave, are sitting in front of computers making money from the provision of services for sweaty, dusty pilgrims. Emmy and I were customers of Follow the Camino, a company based in Dublin. Working via the internet and email they organised our accommodation, arranged sherpa transport of our suitcases from stopping-point to stopping-point, and supplied information about the route. It was relatively expensive but for us it was money very well spent. [see: http://www.followthecamino.com/]

In Carlisle, northern England, we celebrated our completion of the Cumbria Way walk (see Footsore in Carlisle: We complete the Cumbria Way posted August 22, 2011) with a meal at Nando’s in Warwick Street, one of a world-wide chain of restaurants that specialise in fried chicken spiced with Portuguese peri-peri sauce. A Camino story was emblazoned in wavy lines of lettering on the wall behind us.

“This tale dates back to the 14^th century and, like all legends, the details differ depending on who’s doing the telling. Here’s our version. A pilgrim was passing through the village of Barcelos in Portugal when he was wrongly accused of theft. This was a serious charge for which a guilty verdict meant death. The pilgrim was brought before the town’s judge who was about to eat a cockerel for dinner. Feeling vulnerable in a strange village, and knowing what his sorry fate might be, the pilgrim pleaded: “If I am innocent, may that cockerel get up and crow!” No sooner had he spoken than the cockerel got up and crowed heartily (well it is a legend!) With that, the pilgrim was pardoned and allowed to go on his way. Ever since, the Barcelos cockerel has been the symbol of Faith, Justice & Good Luck.”

… and – we should add – it is also the symbol of Nando’s peri-peri fried chicken.

A story from the Camino pilgrimage on the wall of Nando’s peri-peri chicken restaurant in Carlisle, northern England.

Thus does the power of a Camino narrative lend pseudo-religious authority to Nando’s corporate image, helping the company to filch money from the pockets of diners and boost profits even in the bleak streets of distant Carlisle.

For many pilgrims, walking the Camino is a “spiritual” experience they imagine (or hope?) is utterly different from stressing out on the highways of modern society…

… but the Camino depends absolutely on those highways, i.e. on the infrastructure of modern commerce, and can’t be disentangled from it. In Santiago de Compostela the earthen path and the asphalt highway merge in the city’s narrow lanes – packed with restaurants and souvenir shops – that lead to the cathedral.

The Cross of St.James

Over the centuries traditions, rituals and unique icons have gathered like age lines on the face of the Camino. They lend the pilgrimage an endearing, antique charm. Pilgrims fresh from the hard streets of Warsaw, Seattle, Madrid, even Canberra, embrace them with enthusiasm. Some seem to believe very genuinely that the Camino’s rituals bring them religious illumination and merit. Others may be looking for some vague connection with the past. Quite a few, perhaps more than a few, are simply and sincerely hoping that, as they walk the Camino, they are “doing it right”, like tourists solemnly stumbling through an exotic local dance at their resort hotel.

Canberra writer Tony Kevin, who walked to Santiago over the Via de la Plata and wrote a fine book about it (Walking the Camino: A Modern Pilgrimage to Santiago, 2007), quotes part of a poem by sixteenth century adventurer Walter Raleigh:

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet,

My staff of faith to walk upon,

My scrip of joy, immortal diet,

My bottle of salvation,

My gown of glory, hope’s true gage,

And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.

The Passionate Man’s Pilgrimage (1604)

Many of these trappings are still to be seen in the Camino pilgrimage four hundred years later. The scallop shell, the staff (today more commonly a telescopic carbon-steel walking pole), the pilgrim’s menu (the quality of which sometimes threatens to deliver you more quickly than you expected to the realm of immortality), the calabash gourd bottle (today replaced by steel or plastic bottles, even by “camel-back rehydration bladders”)… all these and more still extend their offer of symbolic authority to the modern pilgrim. In their current incarnations they can connect us to the distant past, though there is no doubt that today their power as religious symbols has weakened.

Here are notes on some of these rituals and traditions as I experienced them on the Via Portugues in July 2011.

The yellow arrow

The yellow Camino arrow with (pointing in the opposite direction) the blue arrow of the pilgrimage to Fatima in Central Portugal.

Along all the branches of the Camino you will find yellow arrows pointing the way to Santiago de Compostela. They appear on walls, trees, roadside milestones, footpaths and in formally painted signs. Mostly they have been put in place, and are re-painted from time to time, by pilgrim support organisations. In northern Portugal they appear every few hundred metres. Occasionally they are no more than a few metres apart, especially at intersections or in places where there might be doubt about the correct way forward. The yellow arrows are less frequent on the Spanish leg of the Via Portugues, but there are still plenty of way markers in the form of tiles with the scallop shell motif (see below). Like many traditions along the Camino, the yellow arrows are not as old as they are sometimes taken to be. In fact their use as way markers dates back no further than the 1980s, attributed to Don Elias Valina Sampedro (died 1989), a priest of O Cebreiro parish on the Via Frances to the east of Santiago de Compostela. He pioneered the restoration of the Camino pilgrimage in the 1970s and 1980s. In Portugal the now ubiquitous arrows first appeared no more than 10 years ago.

Don’t follow the asphalt road! Three arrows on tree trunks direct you down a side path in northern Portugal.

The scallop shell

A scallop shell tile on a wall approaching the outskirts of Santiago de Compostela.

Outside the massive front doors of the cathedral in Tuy a street vendor presses his wares on visitors. He is selling scallop shells harvested from beaches along the Iberian coast. They cost €1.50 (about Aust$2.00) each. They gleam in mat-white ivory with the characteristic fan-shaped pattern of grooves radiating over their gently arched outer surfaces. For reasons that are now hidden under the mildew of time the scallop shell has become the iconic symbol of the Camino pilgrimage. In stylised form it is seen everywhere, especially on tiles that – cemented to walls and milestones – point the way to Santiago. Many pilgrims display the shells on their clothes and gear, or dangle them from their walking staves. The symbol is old, and there are many stories about its origins. Here are two (quoted from Wikipedia):

Version 1: After James’ death, his disciples shipped his body to the Iberian Peninsula to be buried in what is now Santiago. Off the coast of Spain a heavy storm hit the ship, and the body was lost to the ocean. After some time, however, the body washed ashore undamaged, covered in scallops.

Version 2: After James’ death his body was mysteriously transported by a ship with no crew back to the Iberian Peninsula to be buried in what is now Santiago. As James’ ship approached land, a wedding was taking place on the shore. The young bridegroom was on horseback, and on seeing the ship approaching, his horse got spooked, and the horse and rider plunged into the sea. Through miraculous intervention, the horse and rider emerged from the water alive, covered in seashells

Scallop shell in a city footpath (Tuy, north western Spain)

The scallop shell on my backpack identifies me as a Camino pilgrim.

Drinking fountains

At many points along the Way there are water spouts emptying into stone bowls where pilgrims can drink and refill their water bottles. Called fonte in Portuguese and fuente in Spanish, many are clearly very old. They make an appearance in Walter Raleigh’s poem where he dreams of what he will do for “peaceful pilgrims”…

I’ll take them first

To quench their thirst,

And taste of nectar suckets,

At those clear wells

Where sweetness dwells

Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.

Exotic stories cling to some of them. At the very least, for some pilgrims they have powerful symbolic value. Triple spouts (of which there are many in Portugal and Spain) are taken to represent the triple refreshments of the Christian Trinity. As Raleigh put it 400 years ago:

There will I kiss

The bowl of bliss,

And drink mine everlasting fill;

Upon every milken hill:

My soul will be a-dry before;

But after, it will thirst no more.

A triple fuente in the centre of Pontevedra, Spain

I fill up at a wayside drinking fountain in northern Portugal. Note my still-fresh black eye (see “Fajozes to Barcelos: Disaster (almost)” posted July 19, 2011)

Stones of sorrow

A milestone heaped with pebbles of sorrow. Note the number below the tile… just 70 kilometres more to Santiago.

As I reported in an earlier post [The mystique and the shadows of the Camino, posted July 29^th] some pilgrims believe you can pick up a stone, put your sorrow into it, and disburden yourself of that sorrow when you put the stone down. Some carry stones from their homes all the way to Santiago de Compostela cathedral, others abandon their stone in certain special places like the heights of Cruz de Farro on the Via Frances, still others do the ritual “in instalments”, picking up stones and relinquishing them as they walk. On the Via Portgues some waymarkers are piled high with stones, and stones litter the ground around many wayside crucifixes.

Emmy lets go of her sorrows (rather small ones).

A wayside cross littered with stones of sorrow at a high point in the Camino trail in northern Portugal.

Wayside crosses, shrines and chapels

A typical wayside cross with Christ above and a pilgrim below.

Like decorated letters that punctuate the lines of an illuminated manuscript, the tracks of the Camino are punctuated by exotic wayside crosses, tiny niche-in-a-wall shrines and small chapels that are filled with symbolic pith. Some seem to function like roadside guard houses – places where Jesus is thought to keep a protective watch over the passing current of pilgrims. Quite a few wayside crosses are carved with effigies of Christ on the cross. Below him, on the shaft of the cross, there may appear a weathered image of a pilgrim complete with walking staff, water gourd and scallop shell. Some crosses are festooned with paper prayers and messages left by passing pilgrims.

For the weary walker there are few sights more welcome than a wayside chapel. Inside you find quiet respite from the relentless unravelling of distance under your feet. The heat, noise and dirt of the road shrink away. For a short time at least, you can wonder at the stillness and allow it to refresh you before you step out again into the incessently moving world of the walk.

A small roadside chapel between Redondela and Pontevedra in Galicia, Spain.

Inside a wayside chapel, an image of “Christ of the Good Journey”.

A tiny makeshift shrine, stones of sorrow and paper prayers surround a wayside crucifix near O Porrino in Galicia, northern Spain.

The Camino greeting

It is a tradition for walkers on the Camino to greet one another, and to be greeted by non-walkers, with a special cheery phrase: Bom Caminho (pronounced /bong.ka.MEEN.yo/) in Portuguese, and Buen Camino (pronounced /b’wen.ka.MEE.no/) in Spanish. Translated into English the greeting means something like “Well may you fare!” I may be wrong, but I think I heard a Galician variant of the phrase in north-west Spain. It sounded like /b’wen.ka.MEEN.yo/, sort of halfway between the Portuguese and Spanish variants of the greeting.

Pilgrim accommodation and pilgrim food

A sign advertising dormitory accommodation for pilgrims, north-western Spain

On the Via Frances there is a well-developed chain of hostel-type lodgings especially for bona-fide pilgrims. Called albergues or refugios they offer toilets, showers, bunk beds in dormitories, and simple kitchen facilities, all at a very nominal cost. This network is not so well developed along the Via Portugues, but there too the number of albergues is growing rapidly. Being too attached to bourgois comforts and the old-fashioned notion of privacy, Emmy and I did not stay in albergues. Instead we pre-booked accommodation that included breakfast and an evening meal in small hotels and B&Bs. Without exception these turned out to be comfortable although far from luxurious, with an especially warm welcome for pilgrims.

On the road, and in many of our overnight lodgings, we were able to order meals from a “pilgrims’ menu”. Meals on the pilgrims’ menu are slightly cheaper than standard meals, but the food is generally good, no-nonsense fare. An average pilgrim meal might consist of a soup entree, a meat dish (usually pork) with vegetables (usually boiled), and a dessert of fruit. Prices range from €7.00 to €12.00 including local wine and a cup of coffee or tea. In short, it is a good deal.

Multi-lingual advertisement for hungry pilgrims. Tuy, north-western Spain.

A typical meal from a pilgrims’ menu: cheese and olives (top), rice and fried chicken. Served at the Casa Cecilia Restaurant, near Vilarinho, Portugal. It cost eight fifty Euros per person, including a soup entree and a cinnamon apple dessert.

In Santiago de Compostela and in a few places beyond the city, you can buy a special Tarta de Santiago, “cake of St.James”. This is a round, almond flavoured cake, sprinkled with icing sugar and embossed with a stencilled cross of Santiago. The cross of Santiago is an ancient icon, probably derived from the age when Santiago was the celestial patron of the Christian armies that – for some 700 years – harried Iberia’s Moorish rulers. The shaft of the cross tapers into a piked point like the blade of a sword, while the arms and the head are split and peeled back into the triple curls of a stylised fleur de lis.

Tarta de Santiago.

The pilgrim credencial and the compostela

The Compostela certificate

A compostela is a certificate in Latin issued by the cathedral of Santiago to pilgrims who have completed the Camino pilgrimage “impelled by religious devotion” (pietatis causa). To meet the cathedral’s definition of satisfactory completion pilgrims must walk at least the last 100 kilometres to the cathedral end-point. Most pilgrims walk much further than the minimum. The Via Frances, for example, extends about 800 kilometres from the Pyrenees to Santiago, even further if you take Le Puy or Paris or Vezelay or Arles (all in the deep interior of France) as your starting point. Emmy and I walked 230 kilometres along the Via Portugues from our beginning point in Porto, northern Portugal. You are allowed to cut your walk into stages and complete them at different times with intervals between each stage.

In order to get a compostela you must provide the cathedral with evidence that you have properly completed the pilgrimage. This takes the form of a document called a credencial or “pilgrim passport” which you fill with rubber stamps collected from from churches, albergues, restaurants and other places along the Camino way. Some restaurants even advertise their stamps to lure pilgrims in for a meal. At a pinch, a credencial can be simply a piece of paper, but mostly it takes the form of a concertina of printed cardboard issued by a pilgrim support organisation, a travel company or an albergue. (For an example of what a credencial can look like see: http://www.americanpilgrims.com/camino/credential_cover.html.) The sequence of stamps in the credencial is carefully examined in the Pilgrim Affairs Office (Oficina de Acogida de Peregrinos) at the cathedral, and if it fulfills conditions a compostela is issued on the spot (see Our last day on the Camino posted August 5^th).

The credencial has other functions and benefits. To ensure that guests in an albergue are bona fide pilgrims and not freeloaders trying to chisel a cheap night’s accommodation, credencials are carefully examined when walkers check in. And as I discovered at Tuy General Hospital, other doors too can be opened upon production of a credencial (see I get medical attention in Tuy posted July 26^th).

Part of my credencial, or pilgrim passport, with stamps from churches, hotels and restaurants.

The pilgrim mass and the botafumeira

A recently arrived pilgrim and a nun wait for the pilgrims’ mass to begin

Every day at 11.00 a.m. there is a special pilgrim mass in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. It is an exotic experience. An hour before proceedings start the cathedral’s ranks of simple wooden pews are already filling up. Left and right, at intervals along the wall, anxious communicants kneel in hut-like wooden confessionals while priests lean solemnly towards them cocking their heads to take in tales of sin while gazing out at the ragged throngs eddying down the cathedral aisles. Newly arrived walkers mill in sweaty clusters, their swags and backpacks heaped on the flagstone floor. They quietly squeeze into seats beside nuns and primly dressed women with heads veiled in filmy lace. Every few minutes the buzz is quelled for a few seconds with a loud “SH-SH-sh-sh” that hisses from the public address system. By 10.30 it is standing room only.

Ten minutes before the start of the mass a nun appears on the raised apse and with grandiloquent gestures, portentiously rising on her tip-toes and solemnly descending, she leads the congregation through a rehearsal of the sung liturgy. Then a barricade of priests appears in white frocks and long red stoles hanging to the floor from their necks. The mass – conducted in Spanish with a few passages of German – gets under way. A waterfall of music tumbles over the congregation from organ pipes that project horizontally from the walls of the nave. The choir sends its criss-crossing lines of song up into the ornate ribs of the distant ceiling. The presiding priest reads out the number of pilgrim arrivals from the previous day and their countries of origin. Emmy and I strain to catch the echoing nuances of the Spanish, and yes, there we are: “two arrivals from Australia”.

The climax of the mass is the ritual burning of incense in an enormous bronze thurible, called the botafumeira. After lighting it, a squad of priests hoist it above the congregation and energetically swing it like a giant pendulum left and right across the transept. A bluish haze of smoke rolls up into planks of light that slant down from the dome far above the upturned faces of the congregation. Smiles break out. Children point. Cameras flash.

Pilgrims and their walking gear inside Santiago cathedral

A priest hears confession inside Santiago cathedral. The kneeling legs of a repentant sinner protrude at the left. According to the sign on the confessional the polyglot priest can hear confessions in Spanish, Italian, French, German and English.

The atmosphere in Santiago cathedral during the pilgrims’ mass. Note the ropes used to raise and swing the botafumeira thurible.