"The Way" - el Camino de Santiago

People had told me to watch this movie, knowing that I had walked the Camino - the pilgrimage in Northern Spain. I'd brushed aside the recommendation - why would I need to see the movie when I'd been there, done that?

Martin Sheen with his son, director Emilio Estevez

I LOVED this film! First of all, who wouldn't want to go walking for 90 minutes with the world's favourite U.S. President, Josiah Bartlett (alias Martin Sheen)? Secondly, its almost 10 years since I was a pilgrim and these days I can't even walk for an hour without feeling some pain or other. The main reason I went at the time was because my sister-in-law had died the previous year - she was someone who loved a day's walking - and it had brought home to me how short life is.
The message for me now has changed - even if I live a long life, I may not have the pain-free ease of mobility I had then. Not that I didn't get aching feet and blisters at the time. Or find that my backpack was too heavy for me and got it taxied ahead for the first few days. The actors didn't seem to suffer such mundane indignities. But the movie did show what many non-peregrinos might miss - the languid pleasure of being wrapped in a towel after bathing in a hotel room of your own!

Unlike most people, I was left with a very ambivalent feeling about the Camino and did not want to watch a movie about people discovering the meaning of life or who they are or how transformed they were by it. Like Tom Avery (the Martin Sheen character), I started off wanting but being wary of encounters, not realising how prickly I was. For him it was because he'd just lost his son. In my case, I'd been working at the Trauma Centre for almost two years dealing with survivors of criminal violence. I had no idea how addicted I had become to the adrenaline rush of the work. It took me weeks to calm down. There was another reason for my ambivalence - I didn't have a book to read. Too heavy to carry. So out of boredom in the early evenings, I went to Mass. And the enormity of what the Camino had come to mean in the history of Spain was brought home to me. I quote from an article I wrote at the time:

Spain was once the most richly diverse country in Europe due to the vibrant cultural, intellectual and economic interaction between Christians, Jews and Muslims, particularly in the Moorish kingdoms in the South. In 1085, around the time of the first pilgrimages to Santiago, this was so well recognised that King Alfonso VI called himself "Emperor of the Three Religions". However the aim of the Catholic Church during the centuries of the “Reconquest” of Moorish Spain was one country under Christ. This would ultimately replace the richness of medieval Spain with a "monolith ruled by inquisitorial terror and stifling conformity." (Erna Paris: "The End of Days", Lester Publishing, Ontario, Canada (1995) p.253)

The relics of St. James ('Santiago' in Spanish) - purportedly stored in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela - were used politically to achieve this aim by inspiring the faithful. Santiago originally had two attributes: Apostle and Pilgrim, to which was later added the third of Matamoros (killer of Moors).

When Ferdinand and Isabella united Spain under Christian rule by defeating the Moors at Granada, Jews were forced to convert or be expelled ending 1500 years of Jewish history in Spain. The Inquisition, which had already started in 1478, targeted the converted. Later in Spanish history the descendants of the conquered Moors were also expelled despite conversion to Christianity. 

Most non- and lapsed Catholics on the Camino are not interested in this aspect of its history. It mattered to me then, but it doesn't feel important to me now. Now, I'm just glad I did it! and it inspired me to persuade friends and family to accompany me on other walks in Europe. Quite contrary to what many pilgrims report i.e. that they simplified their lives on returning home, it gave me a wish for everyday luxuries - I bought my first dishwasher and a decent shower-head when I got home!