Memories of the Meseta - 8

Villages in this part of Spain have seen dwindling populations for many years, not helped by the 2008 banking crisis which hurt Spain particularly badly. Unemployment is still well about 20%, and young people are trying to get work in other parts of the Europe, while older workers just plain suffer.

Most villages include a large number of houses just left to deteriorate. Cobwebs fill the windows, and wooden shutters are warped and hanging off their hinges. The adobe homes show the effects of vacancy first. Adobe is a combination of soil (which is like clay here) and straw, which hardens in the sun, and it is quite cheap and easy to use as a building matter.

crumbling adobe

Adobe is also the method of choice for food and vegetable storage, although first used for wine. Hundreds of years ago, children were sent to scoop out the soil from small hills, as their small hands and bodies were well suited to crawling in and digging. the scooped out soil was added to the top of the hill, and there would be an air vent, like a chimney added. Once scooped out, the air would enter the caves and harden the walls, making it an ideal environment for storing wine. In fact, these were called bodegas, and some continue to exist.

waiting for the party!

The danger is some of these have caved in, but those that have been maintained are still used for storing wine and fresh food, and some are used for parties, with the wine fueling the festivities. Wineries here are called bodegas and have constructed modern versions of caves, but the old bodegas are also valuable assets.

Along the Camino, however, we have seen positive signs of life coming back to some of these tiny hamlets and villages. There are new houses being built. Flowers in windows. Children on scooters.

New albergues are added every year or so, and the bar/cafes are very well attended by hungry and thirsty pilgrims. There are many one or two pensions or hostels or casa rurals, and maybe even a one star hotel in the larger places. As everyone enters a village, the familiar scene of travelling bodies sitting on plastic or metal chairs, eating or drinking and greeting their Camino brothers and sisters is heartwarming. Albergues are always open, so they are generally the main coffee stop in the morning, but by lunch time there might be a local place providing sustenance and a place to sit and stretch. There are usually a few benches in a field just before or after town, or in the main square, along with a water fountain that has been there for several hundred years but is still able to fill water bottles.

With 250,000 pilgrims now walking some or all of the Camino, money is really impacting the communities. New tractors and irrigation methods are popping up. Newish cars can be seen here and there. And a smart side business can be extremely profitable.

One of these that is a breakaway success is the baggage forwarding service. One puts a few euros into a specific company's envelope (depending on the company and the distance as marked on the envelope), then fills in their name and where their next accommodation is, attaches this to their pack or suitcase, and leaves it by the desk at their accommodation by 8am. The relevant company's van then does the rounds of picking up the bags and delivering them to whatever village and whatever hostel the owner of the bag is staying in. It's a brilliant system and works great, as long as the baggage company knows there is a bag to be collected and delivered. We set this up before we left with one of the biggest companies, Jacotrans, but those who haven't just make a phone call or email the company and ensure their bag will be included in the day's dealings. The companies operate from one end of the Camino to the other, with small independent operators working regionally.

There are taxi services too for ferrying people who are indisposed to walk. And little shops sell wine and food items to those who can or have to prepare their own food. Of course the albergues and hostels buy food ingredients from local producers to prepare pilgrim meals. A few souvenirs here and there, mostly pins with various Camino-relevant emblems. We can see how this could become tatty tourist craziness as the Camino is more and more popular, but hopefully it will remain respectful of the region and contribute to local coffers in appropriate ways.