On Saturday night in Puente La Reina we walked the 300 meters to the main plaza, where carpenters were putting the finishing touches on elevated platforms in the shape of a
rectangle with three sides, with the missing side opening into the main street. In this street two mid-size, or at least economy, bulls were run back and forth to exhaustion by a band of teenagers, gelled up, in sneakers and soccer shorts, and a few old hands, one of whom did actually get one of the bulls by the horns for a few seconds. A brass band comprised of men in their fifties and sixties, and a long-haired youthful tuba player, was entirely drowned out by a DJ spinning modern pop for a group of dancing adults, each holding a beer in one hand and the beat in the other.
In the same plaza, in 1315 and again in 1345, two Jewish men were burned alive as sodomites, so the use of running bulls as public sport could reasonably be seen by some as an improvement. Last night, it was a young man who got the raw end of the deal when he didn’t get out of bull’s way soon enough, and found its horns dug into his back, throwing him face-down onto the street, where he could be seen lying until he was surrounded by the locals who ran to him.
In semi-autonomous Catalonia, the last bullfight was just conducted last night. The Catalonian legislature has outlawed the practice, though it’s unclear if it was on grounds of animal cruelty, the subsidies the sport was increasingly requiring from local governments, or the EU’s opposition to effectively subsidizing farms that were producing bulls for activities illegal elsewhere in Europe.
In the morning, Julio was dyspeptic. It was going to be nearly 100 degrees, he said, and we were starting much too late. “We should have started at quarter past six,” he said. “It’s going to melt all the Camino.”
The Walk to Estella — 24km
Puente La Reina to Estella. 24 km, very hot, some climbing and descending. The country has grown drier since the lush riverside we found on the way to Pamplona. We walked through vineyards for much of the day. The others found the heat overbearing, but for some reason, perhaps that I was the only one wearing a thin wool shirt (which wicks and breathes), it didn’t bother me much. My feet offered me the least pain of the trip so far.
In Cirauque, a Basque term meaning “nest of vipers,” we came upon the cobbled stones and flagstone borders of a Roman road, and, after a while, a Roman bridge. While most of the Camino follows the Roman Via Traiana, the best-preserved remains of the entire route are here. But the Roman road continued only for a few kilometers, until “improvements” by Camino designers covered it up. Then we wound through more dry, beautiful country, through hills where hermits came to live a thousand years ago, including in the still-extant Ermita de San Miguel.
In a tunnel, amongst the graffiti, someone had written, “The Camino has nothing to do with Compostela. The Camino is right here, right now.” Which is true. The camino, or way, is not about where you end up. It’s how you choose to perceive and respond to the right here, right now.
Communication on the Camino
Communication on the Camino can be a curious thing. Many languages are spoken, but the main two are Spanish and English, the latter being the lingua franca in most conversations in which the speakers aren’t from the same country. The Asians seem to be the most at sea; very few of them speak even a little English, and they have no Spanish at all. How brave they are to come here anyway. They keep largely to themselves.
Communication between bikers and walkers is almost non-existent. So far I have heard only one biker use a bell to signal his approach. None have announced themselves by words. And what would they say? Even among English speakers, it can be confusing for hikers to share a trail with bikers.
“On your left!” bikers say, signaling where they are.
To the left a surprised or even terrified hiker jumps, right into the path of the biker.
Or take this example of on-trail communication. I was in the lead, and passed a lone sneaker that someone had tossed onto the orange furrows of a ploughed field. “Shoe alert!” I said, pointing with my right stick.
“What did he say?” my mother said, in third position.
“I think he saw something but I didn’t catch the first word,” Carrie said, in second.
“Oh!” says Mom. “A bird?”
“What bird?” demands Julio, in fourth position.
This is how legends, myths, and religious stories get passed down, not to mention fabulist tales such as that of President Obama being a foreign-born Muslim planted here nearly 50 years ago by Al Quaeda for nefarious ends.
