July 2024
Everyone in O Cebreiro is talking about something that’s been conspicuous by its absence these past few weeks: pilgrims. In mid-July, a point in the year when the place used to be buzzing, there’s nobody here but the locals. ‘It feels like a rerun of the pandemic’, somebody said, and I had to agree. On a sunny evening, the tables in the plaza are empty, the bars are empty, the two little craft shops are empty.
There are pilgrims, of course, and if you happen to be in O Cebreiro in the morning, you will see them enjoying a well-earned rest after the stiff climb to get here. Those same tables are full, hedged round with rucksacks and walking poles, as their owners chat happily over cold drinks and coffees. They don’t stay long, though. Eventually they stand up, wrestle their rucksacks back on, and make their way down the village’s only street to rejoin the Camino. What has changed, and why?
I think there is a simple, two part explanation for this. I remember well the blazing hot day in June 1986 when I toiled up the slope to O Cebreiro for the first time. It was my destination that day, and like almost all pilgrims back then, I’d set off that morning from Villafranca del Bierzo. Villafranca marked the beginning of the 11th ‘etapa’ of the Camino Frances, ending in Triacastela, according to the stages of the route set out by Aimeric Picaud in the twelfth century. Back in the 80s pilgrims stuck to the ‘etapas’, partly to honour tradition, but partly too because there were so few places to stay if they didn’t. The first half of the 11th stage was a good example of this, and was also notorious for the challenging ascent from Herrerias to O Cebreiro that added 8 kilometres to the 20 from Villafranca to Herrerias. Today, when there’s no lack of small hotels and private albergues along this whole section of the Camino, pilgrims are increasingly inclined to stop for the night earlier and leave the ascent to O Cebreiro for the following morning, taking a break there before carrying on.
Similarly, years ago many pilgrims used to start in O Cebreiro, aiming to reach Santiago in time for the celebratory fireworks on the evening before St James’s feast-day on 25th July. (I recall how, a week before the feast in the 1993 Holy Year, more than 1000 pilgrims slept in field tents supplied by the army.) What has all but eliminated this practice in recent years has been the over-promotion of Sarria as the starting point of the 100 kilometres needed to qualify for the ‘compostela’. From Sarria onwards, the newspapers tell us, the Camino is not just a stream of pilgrims, it’s a river. Some would say it has burst its banks. If pilgrims - especially retired and foreign ones, families, and people on tight budgets - fear that they won’t find beds from Sarria onwards to Compostela, perhaps they are choosing other routes over the Camino Frances, or ceasing to come in summer. Whatever the reasons, the effect of these tendencies has been that O Cebreiro is fast ceasing to be an ‘obligatory’ stopping-place, replete with historical and spiritual significance, and is becoming a mere pit stop: somewhere to obtain a stamp for a credencial and a quick coffee, but not a place to devote time to exploring or learning about and certainly not a place of discernment. This is clearly a loss for pilgrims, whether they realize it or not.