Wondering to Guernica
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I made it to another nondescript two-star (maybe one and a half star?) hotel this afternoon, happy once again to wash the rain water off with shower water. It was sixteen and a half miles of hiking. I put the rain gear on and off about five times. It wasn’t the constant soaking rain I had the other day, just enough to make things muddy and miserable at times. I tore my good hiking shirt on some thorns. I slipped and fell on the wet wooden stairs (and two very nice Spanish ladies ran to my aid, which consisted of pouring more water on me). I’m tired of hills. I’m ready for some English conversation.
Any sane person would be asking about now: so why are you doing this? Interestingly, that’s the question they ask you in Santiago if you make it all the way to the end and you want the official compostela stamp. And quite helpfully, they think, it is a multiple choice question with only three answers: a. Religious reasons; b. Cultural reasons; or c. Other.
On this part of the Camino, my sense is that there are a lot of “c. Other” people. There was a lot more devoted “a. Religious reasons” pilgrims on the part we did last year. Perhaps that was because it was the end of the Camino, and it was a jubilee year when you can nab a “get out of Purgatory free” card (well, not for free… you had to walk at least 100km to get it… and then have a priest hear your confession, and do whatever else he said you had to do). Here, I’m bumping into a lot of people who are just interested in hiking. They come and hike for a week or two, and then go home. I haven’t met anyone yet who said they’re going all the way to Santiago, nor anyone who appears particularly pious. Perhaps that’s just a sampling error because of the part of the path I’m on now.
Anyway, how would I answer the question? I think I’d like to have some other options — or at least some more nuance to the options. I do think there are valid religious reasons for doing this, even if you’re not Catholic, and even if you think the whole legend of St. James is apocryphal. I’ve said before that it is a kind of spiritual discipline to do this… but now I’m asking (or at least trying to answer because I hear you asking), for what?
I’m a believer in the connection between our physical and spiritual lives. So
the things I do with my body matter: the spaces I put it in, the activities I participate in, the things I put into it (though of course remembering what Jesus had to say about that one). The NIV translation of 1 Cor. 9:27 which I memorized as a Bible quizzer back in the day has Paul invoking athletic metaphors, and then saying, “Therefore I beat my body and make it my slave.” Yikes! That sounds like it could open things up to abuse. But drawing on my knowledge of Greek (which is about equivalent to my Spanish!), I think you can legitimately translate that sentence as “I discipline my body so that it serves me.”
Is that what I’m doing out here?? I don’t know… I’m certainly participating in the spiritual discipline of solitude. And there is a kind of fasting from much of my normal life. And my body is getting disciplined. If all of that makes me holier, then I’m all for it! But that wasn’t really my intention in doing this. My stated intention was to write a book. I’m writing a book about the spiritual journey of our species, and thought as part of that I should have my own spiritual journey. But it wasn’t just to discipline my body. I could have done that at home. I think I wanted to have an adventure. And when you go to have an adventure, challenges and difficult days are part of the package deal.
I’ve not been fasting from everything in my normal life. I’ve mentioned trying to watch sports on the Spanish TV (which still isn’t going well). But I also have access to my Amazon Prime account (though not Netflix or YouTube TV) on my iPad. So I’ve joined in with the throngs of people watching the new Rings of Power series, which is a prequel to the Lord of the Rings saga (in case you’ve been living under a rock). Perhaps it is just a sampling error of what I’m doing right now, but I sure like that Elanor Brandyfoot who tries to explain to her parents what she’s been doing, “I can't help but feel there's wonders in this world beyond our wandering.” But then her mother responds with the Harfoot mantra, “Nobody goes off trail, and nobody walks alone.”
I haven’t read anything about the series, and never made it through the Silmarillion, so I’m just guessing here, but I assume the Harfoots are the ancestors of the hobbits, who are notoriously homebodies. So it’s interesting that the Harfoots are pretty mobile, always on the move. But also, they are creatures of habit, going through the same migrations each year, year after year. But there is also a minority report in Elanor and even her friend Poppy. Poppy sings the traveling song (which seems deeply subversive to Harfoot culture), and must be what lived on in them for the thousands of years until Bilbo Baggins had his longing to go have an adventure. Here are some of the words:
I’d trade all I've known for the unknown ahead.
Call to me, call to me lands far away
For I must now wander this wandering day
Away I must wander this wandering day.
Sing to me, sing me to land far away
Oh rise up and guide me this wandering day,
Please promise to find me this wandering day.
At last comes their answer through cold and through frost
That not all who wonder or wander are lost
No matter the sorrow no matter the cost
That not all who wonder or wander are lost.
Did they drop the “wonder” part of that last phrase when it was used to describe Strider in The Fellowship of the Ring? I like the “wonder” part added in here. It feels to me like what I’m doing. I’m not sure if what I’m doing counts as wandering, as I have a very prescribed path. But I’m definitely wondering as I don’t wander. And that too is part of the adventure, and it’s helping to shape this book in my mind too!
Anyway… all that as a prelude to say, “I’m in Guernica.” For any art historians out there (or even buffs to a degree), you’ll recognize that as the name of one of Picasso’s famous paintings. That’s me standing by a mural of it in the city.
Picasso (one of Spain's favorite sons) painted it in 1937 in response to the bombing of the city by Nazis, which they did at the request of the Spanish Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. I won’t pretend to understand all the politics involved there, but know that the Nationalists were led by General Franco, who won the civil war (it helps when you enlist the Nazis), and ruled Spain until the 1970s. Simone Weil, whose grave I visited back in episode 3 or 4 of this travel log, came to Spain to fight with the Republicans (not the same as those by that name in the US!) even though she was a pacifist. I love me a good paradox! Thankfully she injured herself stepping into a pot of boiling oil and had to leave, because just a bit after that the group she was with was ambushed and everyone in it killed. Picasso’s painting does a pretty good job of capturing the horrors of war.
Last night I had dinner at the hostel with a French guy named François (I said I should change my name to “American”). We’re staying in the same hotel tonight, and thought we might have dinner again. But it is an odd hotel with no reception desk (and certainly no restaurant). When you arrive, you scan your passport in a machine, and a key drops out. So I don’t really know how to find him. All I know is his first name, and that he is a minister of public health, but also smokes cigarettes (another paradox, of a sort!). Wish me luck.
Wondering to Guernica
I need to stop trusting my memory. The Fifth column story was about the fall of Madrid, not Barcelona. Sorry. Next time I will check with Wiki first.
The politics of the Spanish Civil War were as complicated as anything in European history. I used to know an awful lot about that war, though I have probably forgotten some. My mother’s first boyfriend joined the Lincoln Brigade which was the American contingent of the large foreign presence on the Republican side. He was killed. Most of the Lincoln Brigade were Communists, but the Republican (so named because they supported the brand new Spanish Republic) side was supposed to be a “united front” consisting of Stalinist communists, Trotskyites, socialists, anarchists (a large group in those days) sindicalists (very complicated ideology) and even a few folks who just liked democracy. Franco, whose army was partially Spanish and partially Moroccan and other mercenaries, was well funded by Mussolini, and later Hitler. The Germans realized at about the midpoint of the war (1936-7) that Spain could be a good proving ground for some of their new weaponry and tactics. The ultimate victory of the fascists was also due to the end of the united front, (which had rarely been entirely united) mostly due to Stalin’s hatred of Trotsky and the socialists, and in fact, there was a brief civil war within the civil war when Stalin had the communist contingent in Barcelona attack the socialists. Barcelona became the final stronghold of the anti fascists, which was attacked by 4 columns of Franco’s troops (with many Italian volunteers). And the famous “fifth column” of anti communists (not all them actually fascists) was the secret uprising within the city that led to the final defeat.
As a child of Stalinists, I knew veterans of the war, heard many stories and learned the songs. Ironically when the long-predicted war between good (communism) and evil (fascism) finally came to pass (we call it WWII), Franco declared neutrality, and stayed out of the war entirely.
If you meet any Spaniards of my age (Boomers) they can fill you in on what their parents told them about the war, and especially how they themselves reacted when Franco finally left the scene. That was a crazy time in Spain, where my generation caught up to the peers elsewhere in record time.
BTW, where you are now (the mountains) was where most of the survivors of the Republican armies fled to after the fall of Barcelona. I think a small number remained there, so some of their grandkids could be there still. Just a thought.