This is from "Slow Camino". Having seen the movie "The Way" where Martin Sheen's pack pack gets stolen by Gypsies, I was a bit afraid of getting robbed and so I took a padlock, mace and a carbon tipped flashlight/weapon.
However the reality is this:
How overblown was my fear of being attacked or robbed on my journey? If there was much less violent crime in Spain than in the United States, how illogical was it that I wanted to carry a carbon-tipped weapon on the Camino, when I would have never considered carrying one walking around Maine? By getting rid of the padlock and the can of mace and the carbon-tipped pen flashlight, I had relieved my pack of weight. But as importantly, I had also dropped some psychological baggage—another one of those things that “just ain’t so” as Mark Twain would say. I decided there was perhaps more cognitive dissonance going on in my life than I knew.
So the next day when I got to Logrono, I found myself at the very swanky F & G Hotel Logrono where I got a pilgrim rate single room for 50 euros. I sat at the writing desk in my room and went online with my iPad to look up international crime and murder statistics. Here is what I found:
You are safer walking the Camino in Spain than any day you spend in the United States.
Rape per 100,000 is 3.4 in Spain and 27.3 in the United States.
The murder rate is 0.9 in Spain and 5 in the United States
Violent crime rate is 10.4 in Spain and 88.8 in the United States
From "Slow Camino"