Progress

[sillydoll]

In 2002 when we started at Roncesvalles we slept on the 2nd floor of the monastery in old steel -framed double bunks. In 2004 we slept in the old granary. Now in 2011 the albergue is in the old youth hostel building, all smart and sterile with two bunks per cubicle, a shiny stainless steel kitchen with a row of microwaves and vending machines with pre-cooked food, cold drinks, cakes, sweets etc. Progress has come to Roncesvalles and the old monastery now boasts a swanky new Hotel Roncesvalles.

In 2002 we walked on slippery, rutted, muddy trails down the hills towards Zubiri and Larrrasoana. In 2011, many of the trails have been paved with concrete and stone and are like walking through a botanical garden!

Many of the villages have changed beyond recognition. Santa Catalina de Somoza was a tired, dusty little village with one bar (that didn't have any food), not on the main road, and a basic albergue where we had to wait for a school boy on a bicycle to come and open up. Today it looks like a carnival town - brick paved Calle Mayor with bill boards, large signs advertising albergues, zimmers, cafe bars with tables and umbrellas on both sides of the road. Progress in Santa Catalina.
Parts of the Camino Frances are unrecognizable from 10 years ago.

The number of tradtional pilgrim shelters is shrinkinmg as new private up-market albergues open almost next door to the old. In Ribadiso do Baixo there is a restaurant bar behind the 13th c San Anton albergue and a brand new albergue just 50m across the road with laminate flooring, washing machines, television, internet and wifi. The old albergue diningroom is silent and empty and nobody sits on the lawn sharing wine, bread or blister plasters - they are all next door in the cafe-bar. Progress has come to Ribadiso.

It reminds me of the poem by Hilaire Belloc, Tarrantella, "Do you remember an Inn, Miranda, do you remember an Inn?"

 

[markss]

Interesting observations. Do you notice any general change in the type people and their purposes for walking the Camino as compared to those who walked in 2002?

My own Camino experience only dates back to 2010. I was surprised that a good many people seemed attracted to the Camino primarily because it was an inexpensive holiday. Obtaining a Compostela was for many a matter of receiving tangible recognition for making the trek rather than evidencing a real pilgrimage to a holy place. I don't mention this in a judgemental sense, more a point of observation.

Is there a distinction to be made between a pilgrim and a person on holiday? My guess is that the more conveniences along the way, the more attractive the holiday aspect. Then again I wonder how many may have started with the intention of making it a holiday and somehow "caught the spirit" and had it become much more for them. Whatever the purpose, the Camino holds something for all.

 

[grayland]

The differences between 2009 and 2010 were very noticeable even tho it was only one year.
I have mixed feelings about the changing Camino.
:| :|

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Hornillos del Camino. In 1998 we had to make a shopping list and give it to a couple of pilrims who were then taken in the warden's car to a nearby village with a store. We had no choice but to eat in the kitchen. The atmosphere that night in the kitchen was tangible and mystical.The overflow was in the sports hall but wasn't needed.

In 2004 there was a cafe-resturaunt. I very much enjoyed the meal there so it was with mixed feelings that I realised the warden no longer needed to take the pilgrims to buy their supper.

In 2007 (or was it 2008?) the shop was open.

Progress or an innocence lost?

How many villages along the Camino would now be deserted if the pilgrim numbers had not risen?

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Interesting observations. Do you notice any general change in the type people and their purposes for walking the Camino as compared to those who walked in 2002?

In 1998 I met only two people who were walkers; everyone else was a pilgrim walking for spiritual or religious reasons.

On my next Camino in 2004 I noticed that people walking for other reasons had become a significant group.

2005-2010: Now I feel like a minority.

I am not saying whether this is a good or a bad thing. I simply note the change.

 

[Sagalouts]

Ah when I where a lad you could get a fish and chip supper for 2 shillings and 6 pence be in bed by 6.30 up at 7 work in the fields for 12 hours and come home to a lard dinner.
I see that all those that pine for the good old days keep going back,why's that??
some that go on about the good old days now take organized groups round eh Sil :wink:
everything changes but change itself,for those pining for the old days why not put some pebbles in your boots to make it more authentic, or crawl up to O'Cebreiro on your knees for that special Camino moment.
you have only to read the posts of newbies on this site or read their blogs to see what an uplifting life changing experience it is for them all,to harp on about how much it as all changed is to belittle this experience for them as if yours was so much better :roll:
"better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone,for the times they are a changing"
Ian

 

[markss]

you have only to read the posts of newbies on this site or read their blogs to see what an uplifting life changing experience it is for them all,to harp on about how much it as all changed is to belittle this experience for them as if yours was so much better

Excellent point!

Oh but it is so much fun to reminisce, even when that recollection might be somewhat skewed. Think of it as a mental exercise akin to viewing old photographs, only a bit more imaginative. And in ten years we can look back equally as fondly on the Camino in 2011. None of these comments are in any way belittling. That is just a faulty implication. One person's walk in the park may be another's climb up Mt. Everest.

Don’t know much about the price of fish and chips, that’s a British thing. I would recommend going easy on the lard - clogs the arteries. Otherwise the suggestion of putting pebbles in your boots and crawling up the mountainside has some real merit!

 

[fraluchi]

Now in 2011 the albergue is in the old youth hostel building, all smart and sterile with two bunks per cubicle, a shiny stainless steel kitchen with a row of microwaves and vending machines with pre-cooked food, cold drinks, cakes, sweets etc. Progress has come to Roncesvalles and the old monastery now boasts a swanky new Hotel Roncesvalles.

>
With all the publicity made over the past 10 years, it is obvious that entrepreneurs are happy to satisfy the "tourigrinos" demand. Pilgrims who laid the spiritually golden eggs are being replaced by a more mondane crowd of emotions seekers. It probably doesn't upset Santiago in his tomb!?

 

[colinPeter]

Like most things, it's getting the balance right.

I've only walked once in 2009, so a can't speak with much authority.
However, one side of me thinks I would have liked to have done in the "old days", the other side delights in finding nice accommodation at the end of a long day.

For me it's probably somewhere between a "pebble in the shoe" & having my bags carted to the next B&B.

Hoping to walk again in Sept/Oct so it will be interesting to note the difference.

Don't think I'll miss that muddy slope into Zubiri, remember it well.

 

[sillydoll]

Ian, you are probably right! My mother used to say, "The bad days of today will be the good old days of tomorrow".

In my post I was comparing my own personal experiences of walking the Camino in 2002, 2004, 2007, 2009 and 2011. In no way was I trying to belittle anyone elses' Camino experience or suggest that mine were much better - I think you know me better than that! Reading memoirs of places visited by those who have gone before shouldn't take away the enjoyment one has of visiting those same places years later.

I am not the first person to compare the Camino experience. This is an excerpt from a report by the CSJ former Chairman Laurie Dennett, written 6 years ago.

"Following the Jaca conference [1987], when D Angel Luis Barreda Ferrer took over as President of the [Spanish] Federation, and into the 1990’s, there was a growing tension between the assocations of Amigos and the various interest groups seeking to make economic capital out of the Camino. This was not at all an easy balance to maintain, and by 1991, the year in which the statistical barrier of 10,000 pilgrims was broken, there were many who believed that both the physical integrity of the route and what I will call, for want of a better term, “the pilgrim experience” were being compromised by excessive promotion, especially in Galicia. There were complaints about sections of the route being gravelled or paved over, or even eradicated altogether as roads were widened to take more traffic."

Of the refugios, he wrote:

"The second priority for the future is the preservation, amidst the numbers and the competing claims for pilgrim custom, of the possibility for silence, for contemplation, shared or individual, and the experience of receiving hospitality. In recent years, and I believe this is a trend that will continue, there has been a welcome return to the appreciation of the pilgrim as a seeker, and resistance to the commercialisation of the pilgrimage."

Commenting on the signs of progress of Cultural Tourism on the Camino and comparing it with what it was like 10 years ago shouldn't disqualify one from returning to it and enjoying it just as much, whether as a solo pilgrim or with a group of like-minded pilgrims, even though some of the progress can be personally jarring and cause for concern.

 

[gregdedman]

Each pilgrimage route peaks and troughs in it's popularity. Our generations at present are at 'the peak'. Give it a few hundred years and itll be overgrown and forgotten again (except maybe the last 100km) only read of in e-books and hologram 3-d presentations or whatever technology exists!

What we write about change now, soon becomes a historical document that continues to tell the story of ever changing act of pilgrimage.

 

[robertt]

The idea of doing a pilgrimage first came into my mind through a suggestion in a Paris cafe. I was looking for a way to travel which included rural areas and hiking. A friend mentioned the Camino Frances, parts of which he had done, and suggested I could start at Vezelay, to take in France. So my initial interest was tourism, but on foot.

It was only a casual suggestion, and I filed it away. A month or so later, I found myself, as a tourist, in Siena, a city of enormous wealth built on the commercial exploitation of pilgrimage. Fortunately, I'm not easily shocked by commercialism; and, as chance would have it, I fell in with a pilgrim organisation on my very first day in that city. We walked all over Siena, taking in the major pilgrim stops and getting an idea of just how big and busy the Via Francigena was in the Middle Ages.

After that, I started to hike sections of the VF near Siena, and loved the experience. I was also surprised at often being the only person on the trail, even in May.

So I became a pilgrim, through tourism and commerce. I'm still a tourist, a consumer, happy at the sight of a supermarket...but also uplifted when I stumble upon San Martin on a freezing morning, dawdling out of Fromista. Judging from Chaucer and records of the VF and Camino from old times, pilgrimage will always attract saints and bawds, ascetics and on-the-cheap vacationers...and much, much business. Mixed characters and motives, blatant commercialisation, irregularity of every sort - these seem to have been the very stuff of pilgrimage.

I understand why some of the commenters would miss the Camino of recent past decades. It must have been special in its way. But we still have other pilgrim routes, less developed; and there's also my option of walking in the cold season.

I'm happy to live in an era of shopping malls and the democritisation of consumption, though I'm very aware that many pilgrims would like to steer clear of these things. (I actually enjoyed walking through the industrial outskirts of Burgos, so you can see that I'm an extreme case.) Surely, more choice is the key. Options for those wishing to avoid the things I may like are the way to go. Instead of trying to stop change, it may be wiser to foster competing routes and competing types of accommodation. But there I go sounding all commercial again!

 

[ksam]

Ah when I where a lad you could get a fish and chip supper for 2 shillings and 6 pence be in bed by 6.30 up at 7 work in the fields for 12 hours and come home to a lard dinner.
I see that all those that pine for the good old days keep going back,why's that??
some that go on about the good old days now take organized groups round eh Sil :wink:
everything changes but change itself,for those pining for the old days why not put some pebbles in your boots to make it more authentic, or crawl up to O'Cebreiro on your knees for that special Camino moment.
.....
"better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone,for the times they are a changing"
Ian

Ian, Could you hear my roar of laughter all the way across the ocean!! What a way to start my morning!

Some good points made thru out the thread...Having just come back... A first timer...(well on the CF) I was aware of changes...but as it's all new to me...

Buen Camino...Karin

 

[Br. David]

"Ah when I where a lad you could get a fish and chip supper for 2 shillings and 6 pence be in bed by 6.30 up at 7 work in the fields for 12 hours and come home to a lard dinner."

You 'ad Lard? OOoooohhh, we used to dreammmm of 'aving Lard - you were loocky!

 

[+@^^]

the quality of cocaine isnt what it used to be
as any fellow addict will know
the lifelong search is to achieve the high that the first shot produced
and it only ends when you admit you have no control over it
going forward is not the same as repeatedly going back

 

[sillydoll]

Perhaps it isn't progress but regress! I added a post to my blog about 3 years ago on this subject.
The town with the highest number of pilgrim shelters was Burgos which in the 15th-c boasted 32 hospices and still supported 25 into the late 1700’s.
Astorga had 21, Carrion de los Condes had 14 and at one time there were 7 in Castrojeriz. Even small villages like Obanos and Viana had several pilgrim shelters.
Towns that had ‘several’ or ‘many’ (according to Linda Davidson) include Pamplona (at least 6), Estella (about 11), Logrono, Najera, Sahagun (4 in the late 15th-c), Puente de Villarente, Leon (many), Portomarin and Santiago.
One can reasonably estimate that in the middle ages, at the height of the popularity of the pilgrimage to Santiago, there were over 200 pilgrim hospices, probably more, on the Camino Frances. It seems reasonable, therefore, to presume that the numbers of pilgrims were high enough to warrant the existence of so many hospices.

http://amawalker.blogspot.com/2008/10/back-to-past.html

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Perhaps what ought to worry us is that the medieval pilgrimage fell from grace for a number of reasons.

One of them appears to have been an implosion caused by the over-commercialisation of the Camino. Too many people were walking, they were fighting for scarce resources, the prices went up and eventually the interest in the Camino declined. People were priced out of the market.

One cannot blame people for seeing the Camino as a commercial opportunity and I, for one, have been glad to see some development.

With the recession and Spain being in the Euro, will the cost and the sense of being "crowded out" start the next decline in numbers?

It would bother me if it came, because people have sunk their futures into its continuing growth.

 

[Br. David]

True. But don't forget the Reformation :| pilgrimages were rather seriously frowned upon in Protestant nations

 

[Frank1]

I think that if they do not give the compostella any more, the number of pilgrims would decrease a lot. For me I walked from Belgium to Santiago, my stamps given underway means 1000 more than my compostella.

 

[JRWillis]

If I had been born in the early Middle Ages I would surely have found myself attempting to escape the bounds of my limited existence to explore the world in one of the few ways legitimized by society.It may or may not have been inspired by religion or spirituality alone. I would have found myself struggling with fear of the unknown, concerns with safety and my physical limitations. Along the way I would have counted on the support of fellow companions and hoped to find a reasonably comfortable place to lay down my head nd rest at night.
This doesn't sound so different from the goals of today's modern pilgrims. In our world of expanded horizons we all travel many different routes to explore and resolve inner issues and much broader ones involving our relationship to" God", if you are a believer, or generally to examine the path of our life's journey in this world. Every solitary walk in the woods that I make, every journey to a different country, a large impersonal city, an ancient shrine ... Greek, Roman. Christian or Buddhist ... every handprint on the wall made by our early ancestors that I am priviledged to see is a knd of spiritual journey toward understanding my place in the world and to marvel at my being here to enjoy it or to try to understand its complexities and sorrows.
I know I am preaching to the converted when I write all this. But I am a little discouraged with some of the thinly veiled criticisms by a few less generous members of this forum towards those who express some historical perspective on the Camino based on their experience and toward those who walk the path in varied ways. And yes! ... this IS a defense of Sylvia and her band of tourigrinos of which I shall become a member in September. I have no doubt that as couzened as we will be that I will be pushed to my physical limits. The first miracle along the Way was when I was offered a place with this band of pilgrims and the second will be completing it! JRWillis

 

[Br. David]

Absolutely! We are all pilgrims. St. Theresa of Avilia made the pilgrimage in a coach and four with servants.
With the medieval pilgrimage there was also raised status when the pilgrim was back in their community, especially so if they did a distant one such as to Santiago - similarity today is the Mecca pilgrim who has the right to add the honorific hajji to their name - they have raised status and they also become an elder.

p.s. There is a story about St. Theresa on her pilgrimage. In a wild and wet storm the coachman managed to overturn the coach into a ditch. She crawled out, got covered in mud then stood and in a blazing fit raised her fist to the heavens and cried out "If this is how you treat your friends I'm not surprised you have so many enemies" :wink:

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

Alternative ending. "If this is how you treat your friends it is not suprising you have so few of them."

 

[sillydoll]

Until about 40 years ago, the great majority of pilgrims who made a pilgrimage to Santiago were those who arrived in groups by ship, buses, cars and trains. They stayed in hotels, hostals, pensions, fondas or hospederias attached to monasteries.
Sounds pretty much the same as one makes a pilgrimage today to the Holy Land, or to Rome, or to Lourdes - you join a church group, or an organised group or make up your own group or take a bus trip.
40 years ago millions of pilgrims were still visiting Santiago, especially in the Holy Years - but so few walked or cycled to Santiago that no records were kept. Why? Because the journey was not important - the destination was.
Walking was not important. Carrying a backpack was not important. (The pilgrim's office still doesn't care how your backpack gets there as long as you walk the last 100km). The destination was the most important thing, as it is today for millions of pilgrims who visit the tomb of St James every year (but don't walk there.)
The late Don Jaime of Santiago’s cathedral found an old record book kept by his predecessor which showed that in 1967 only 37 pilgrims arrived on foot or horseback. Of the 4 million pilgrims who visited Santiago in the 1971 Holy Year, only 491 Compostelas were issued, mainly to Spanish pilgrims.
Walking to Santiago was not an important criterion (i.e. the journey was not important) but the destination was.
It doesn't matter how you get there. It doesn't matter how far you walk (unless you want the Compostela then you have to walk the last 100km). It doesn't matter where you sleep. It doesn't matter how your baggage gets there. It doesn't matter if you go alone or with a battalion of 300 people.
It is your Camino, you know why you are doing it and you know what is in your heart and when you walk into Santiago you know that you will have achieved something extraordinary. Nobody can take that away from you!

 

[methodist.pilgrim.98]

sil. You make your case well. However, it is interesting that a leaflet issued by the Cathedral for the 2004 Holy Year said that arriving on foot is the most excellent way of undertaking the pilgrimage.

Of course the marking of the Way with yellow arrows has been an obvious reason for the growth of foot pilgrimage and as that is a relatively new invention we must say thank you for progress.