Hugging St. James

After road tripping in Portugal and exploring some more great sea food in Vigo (Spain), I arrived to Santiago de Compostela. I have wanted to visit the beautiful capital of Galicia since I first read about the pilgrimage route of Santiago so I had high expectations about the city but, on the other hand, I already anticipated a partial disappointment.

I was again feeling like an outsider (just like when watching marathon runners) as I arrived to the city by train and not by foot as most of the people attending the pilgrims' mass at the cathedral. I had wanted to attend the mass in order to see the world's largest "botafumeiro" (smoke expeller in Galician), or a thurible, suspended from the roof and in which incense is burnt during the mass. During the holy year (and 2010 happens to be one as Saint James' birthday in July falls on Sunday), they swing the botafumeiro during the pilgrims' mass (every day at noon) and it should be a wonderful sight. I didn't see it after all, but Youtube of course makes travelling in general useless as you can see these extraordinary things from your office chair. It's actually pretty hilarious, the young priests are getting wild...



Instead of seeing botafumeiro swinging around (quite dangerously in my opinion, but I guess that they have a higher power involved in the business), I focussed on pilgrim-watching (I also had an audio guide to make a more sophisticated tour but the bloody mass was too loud to concentrate on the explanations). Some of them were bare-feet and you could see the band-aid wrapped around toes, some were leaning to their walking sticks, and some had already decorated themselves with a scallop shell shaped necklaces (the emblem of St. James). Those who didn't wear hiking boots had already changed to more comfortable flip-flops; I was the only one decently dressed (with the exception of the local worshippers and some Spanish tourists). Some came with their biking gear (you're also allowed to do the route by bike, but they are considered as lower class pilgrims), the most unfit outfit for a church environment.


In the afternoon, I got to the cathedral again as the queue to the "Holy Door" had almost disappeared and I grasped the opportunity of seeing the crypt. On the way to the crypt (where somewhere in the back, behind a glass vitrine you could see a silver coffin presumably containing the last remains of St. James), the line of people walked through the main altar where the tired pilgrims have an opportunity to hug the golden statue of St. James. During the service, I had seen arms caressing the statue and now it was my turn to show some affection to St. James. But I wasn't in the spiritual state provoked by the lack of Facebook and the adrenaline-overdose after 600 km of walking alone. Luckily the girl before me didn't give a very effusive or cordial embrace either, so my panic attenuated and I was ready to step next to St. James. I peeked around and forced myself to tap Jamie in the shoulder (at this stage, I think I can call him just Jamie, as we pilgrims sometimes do).

Later in the evening, in a tapas bar, I had a conversation with a German and Australian pilgrims enjoying big glasses of white wine. I asked them about the spiritual side of the pilgrimage, the hugging of St. James, and about the practicalities of the camino. They were quite cynic about the whole spiritual searching during the route, for them, it was more about spending time alone (and they emphasized the necessity of doing the route alone!). Probably the idea of following the route of one of Jesus's 12 apostotles has less to do with religion than taking inspiration from Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist and other similar semi-philosophical best-sellers. But I guess it needn't to be that tacky either. However, I think I changed my mind about wanting to do this pilgrim route (even though the facilities on the route are good); in case I need a self-searching trip, I would choose a less-known path that would have a more meaningful end for a non-Catholic, non-religious person. Who says you can't find the meaning of your life by tasting port wines in Douro valley...