I was a volunteer hospitalero at Eunate back in 2007.
The old rectory building has a bumpy history, albergue-wise. Way back in the late 1990's, it was opened up as an albergue and administered by the circle of Don Jose Ignacio, the parish priest who also pioneered landmark albergues in Granon, Cirauqui, and Logrono (he died a few months ago). Jan and Mariluz, devout Dutch-Colombian couple lived at the albergue and ran it for several months each year, and trained hospitaleros for the HOSVOL program -- they were trainers at the Toronto Gathering of Pilgrims in 2003(?), where I first became a hospi. (The US and Canadian associations combined forces that year.)
Jan was an avid DIY carpenter, and re-did the inside of the albergue in a creative style that gathered pilgrims around the gigantic fireplace and fed them from a galley kitchen. Sleeping quarters were upstairs in two open rooms, mats on the floor in the old-school Tosantos/Granon style.
Jan and Mariluz left in 2005, I think -- A Frenchman took their place for a while, and made his name creating fancy yellow-arrow themed desserts. My friend Marianne, a Swiss hospi, worked for a while with him; I came to help her open the albergue for the 2007 season. It was not a pleasant experience.
The stone building was bone-crackingly cold, and we could not decipher how Jan's elaborate gas-canister water-heating system worked. We tried building a fire in the fireplace, but the great cold chimney sent all smoke billowing back into the house. Someone from the Navarre culture office opened up the church and found the sound system had been stolen over the winter. The police came, then a couple of priests -- one of whom demanded me and Marianne and the Navarre culture guy be arrested for trespassing on church property!
I quickly learned that albergue was a political football. Everyone involved with it -- the parishioners, the tourism authority, the Heritage of Navarre people, and the Camino people -- viewed it as their personal property, and the arguments were endless over who could stay there, who was in charge, who paid the bills, and who had the right to do what. It was a nightmare for foreign volunteers with limited Spanish, who just wanted to get circulation back into their blue fingers.
I hung on for a week; we got the heat working finally! It was a tough gig.
It would be cool to reopen the albergue, but it's a high-maintenance place, isolated from the villages around it. There are plenty of other accommodations nearby where pilgrims can stay.
(I am sure some others can help me with dates and details I have wrong.)
