This is only my personal opinion, I don't offer it as some sort of truth, so please forgive me -
- but every single communal meal I have had has been spontaneous - or apparently so - it appears to be that if you aren't there you cannot be there - I understand your wish to 'join in' in a sort of temporary visitor way but unless you join in to the daily Camino how can you join in to the evening Camino? ... it isn't an observer sort of thing, it is an involvement sort of thing .. .. there is the shared talking about the pains and joys, the initial difficulties - overcome - of many different languages, the reasons for being there, that awful or wonderful hill, the horned but gentle cattle on the path, the mad guy leaning out of his doorway, the missing sign that led so many astray, the old woman in black who asks all pilgrims to pray for her in Santiago, the ancient dusty dog that sleeps in the middle of the street and cars drive carefully and slowly round her, the shopkeeper who offers oranges for free . and then the laughter, through the tiredness, the downing of good Rioja in toasts and that special special special shared
blessed joy at those moments .. .. unless you too have experienced that day - where your connection???
Sure, you could crash a pilgrim dinner table at a bar .. but they would be each part of one thing and you would not be part of that one thing - it would be like a reporter, fresh from their hotel, sitting at an evening meal with combat soldiers exhausted back from the front ..... it just cannot be bought, it cannot be borrowed, it is a gift from doing, a gift from being .. being a part of that long smelly tired joyful tearful community that builds day by day along those hard trails ...
Apologies - but you cannot
tourist this - you can only
be this - and I know this to be true, as sometimes I visit Camino and offer my first aid and pastoral care from driving around in my Citroen Berlingo mini-camper, and sometimes I walk with a trailer .. and I can tell you with certainty that I just cannot
be there in the way the daily walkers are when I have my Berlingo .. I help but I am always on the outside - sure, I often get invited to the communal meals, especially after helping maybe half a dozen or so, and although I am welcome and they are kind to me they and I know that I am on the outside - it is how it is ... walking
with is the only way to be a true part of it and so, a true part of the communal meals - so my experience - Buen Camino