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The Camino, the last hundred kilometres, and the certificate
The Camino de Santiago is a network of pilgrim routes converging on Santiago de Compostela, where the cathedral is held to contain the remains of the apostle James. It has been walked since the ninth century, was one of medieval Christendom's three great pilgrimages, nearly died out, and has revived enormously since the 1980s — hundreds of thousands of people now arrive each year. The busiest route is the Camino Francés, which crosses the Pyrenees and runs some eight hundred kilometres west. But most people do not walk all of it, and the reason is administrative: to receive la Compostela, the certificate issued in Santiago, you must cover the last hundred kilometres on foot or two hundred by bicycle, and prove it with two stamps a day in your credencial. A hundred kilometres before Santiago is, almost exactly, Sarria — which is why Sarria is where the path suddenly fills with people and why Alex's eight days start there. Pilgrims who have walked from France find this either amusing or annoying. The infrastructure is genuinely good and genuinely cheap. Albergues, some municipal and some private, offer a dormitory bed for a few euros, often on a first-come basis, which is the whole reason the Peregrina says hay que madrugar — beds go early in summer and walking until four in the afternoon can mean walking to the next village. The route is marked by yellow arrows and scallop shells, painted on walls, kerbs and trees, and they are reliable enough that a map is a luxury. One honest note on what the thing is. It remains a religious pilgrimage, and the pilgrim mass in Santiago is a real event rather than a performance for visitors. It is also, for a large proportion of the people on it, a long walk taken for reasons that are not religious at all — a break between jobs, a bereavement, a physical challenge, or simply that a friend suggested it. Both are entirely normal and nobody will ask you which you are. What they will ask, within a minute of meeting you, is ¿desde dónde vienes? and ¿cuánto llevas andando? — which is why those sentences are this lesson's grammar.