Making a Buck or Two off the Pilgrims

For some reason, I spent a lot of this morning's walk thinking about the pilgrim trade and what it means for these towns in Spain. Pilgrims occasionally gripe about how they are the subject of scams, high prices, unequal treatment, etc. One that's particularly amusing is the story of the old lady on the Camino Frances, who could have been sent from Central Casting in Madrid -- a Galician peasant woman, through and through. She has the right kerchief, apron, threadbare sweater, etc. She frequently emerges from her little stone house with a plate of pancakes she has just made and sweetly encourages walkers to try one. She then becomes a little less sweet and a little more aggressive, demanding a euro. I saw that woman in 2000 and hear that she is still in business. With the amount of pilgrims walking by, maybe she has retired and moved to the Canaries and turned her business over to someone else who also looks the part.

Sometimes, the treatment is a little less endearing -- we get less strong coffee, charged more for a beer, not treated to the minimum standards of customer service. (Now pilgrims do their fair share of bad things, too, like not giving a donation for the albergues that don't charge, taking all the bar's toilet paper, etc, etc, but that's another story).

Well, yesterday in Aljucén (population maybe 150), the options for dinner were threefold. Make your own (from the scant supplies bought in the tobacco shop turned grocery), go to the Bar Kiosko and have a sandwich, or go to the Bar Café Sergio for a meal. Several of us walked down to the Sergio and out came the owner -- a woman probably not much older than I, hunched over and walking with a cane, bad teeth, looking not very snazzy. She explained that our meal would be excellent, that the staff of the Ayuntamiento (town hall) frequently came to eat there and were always very happy with their meals (yeah, right), and that there would be a basket of fruit at the end of the meal (maybe she had heard from the shop owner that several of us were particularly sad that there were no fresh fruits or vegetables for sale anywhere in town). Price was 12€.

About 7 of us signed up, and at the appointed hour of 8 pm, walked down to eat. This meal was bad, in fact "bad" is an understatement. First course was chicken noodle soup out of an envelope. Then came the tortilla francesa (that's an omlet with only eggs) that was rubbery almost inedible (hard to do that to two eggs), and the high point of the meal, a salad with good tomatoes, fresh lettuce, onions, etc. We each had an apple and an orange for dessert. I ate the apple, well past its prime, and saved the orange for my walk. Even the wine was undrinkable -- the Australian gent wound up drinking most of it.

Back in the albergue, an animated conversation ensued. There were the Germans and I, regretting having gone there, then the Australian who said it was the best meal he had had since Australia (we wondered if maybe we should have had some of the wine ourselves if it had this transformative power), there were two from Bilbao who just sort of grumbled a bit. Didn't seem to be anyone who had anything positive to say about the price-quality ratio. Then, a guy from Sevilla interjected -- pero, hombre (he said this twice for emphasis and in the way only Spaniards can say it, with a throaty growl between the pero and the hombre) -- ¿De qué van a vivir si no es de nosotros? (What will they live off of if not us?). Good point, I thought.

And p.s., the orange was delicious, I ate it in a field of cork trees on a big rock, watching the cows graze.