Thursday, May 17, 2012
Portomarin to Palas de Rei
Galician Letters Day

I arrive at the Palas do Rei in mid-afternoon. I want to buy something for breakfast for tomorrow morning, but after asking a passerby, I learn that today is a holiday throughout Galicia: it is a El Dia de las Letras Gallegas , a holiday throughout the region: everything will be closed except for a few restaurants and bars. I wonder how many people will be sitting home reading Galician literature today; like as not, the day is an opportunity for a "knees up".

I find my lodgings for the night, Pension Vilarina quickly. I have to enter through the bar, where there are quite a few men seated at tables reading El Pais, or El Correo de Galicia, which are available at the bar. I have the sense that the men come to the bar to read the newspapers --and to drink a shot of cana, the local firewater, with their espresso, and that this is a ritual of life here.

I go up to my room, which is adequate, but nothing more. I try the WiFi but there is no connection. I go downstairs and ask whether there is anything I can do, and am told as I was in Portomarin, that their computer is working, so they can't tell me what is wrong with my computer.

There are two Internet booths for paying customers in the back of the bar, and I am thinking about ponying up two Euros for an hour's use. But first I would like to open a window: it is stiflingly hot in the bar. I ask first: the man behind the bar is cooking a large tortilla espanola, worrying whether to flip the egg-potato mixture now or in a few seconds.

"You can open the window, but if someone complains, you have to close it", he says, turning back to his dish.

I open the window and a strong gust of wind blows the newspapers about. I hurry to put them back, and the windows is closed for me. I am about to approach the Internet terminals, but just ahead of me three young women converge on the terminals. I sit down and order a non-alcoholic beer and pick up El Pais, which is full of news about the Spanish financial crisis. I flip through the newspaper, then set it aside for a moment. Seeing me do so, a short, youngish man comes up to my table and asks me whether I am done with it. He has been sitting at another table in the bar, reading the newspapers. I turn it over, he walks away and returns to his reading, without so much as a "Thank you".

The young women Sara, Mei and Jessica, are all Canadians, and all went to medical school in Dublin. Just graduated, they decided to do the Camino together. Sara, who did most of the organizing of the trip, has a Colombian mother and a Saudi father. She lived in Saudi Arabia and Colombia, and Niagara Falls, where her parents have now settled. Mei is Vietnamese, and lived in Hong Kong before moving with her family to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Jessica is from Newfoundland. Sara wants to work in primary care, Jessica in emergency room medicine; both will be working at Saint Luke's-Roosevelt, not far from where I live. Mei will be staying on in Dubliin another year, doing a fellowship

We strike up a conversation, which is a treat, and ranges from the frankness and sexual nature of married women's talk in "Saudi", to whether men presume sex is part of a date, to the provocative way women doctors in Dublin dress, to why surgery remains a largely male preserve in medicine.

We also remark the lack of hot water available in bathrooms in restaurants and cafe-bars in Spain, the existence of a timer (the Spanish equivalent of the minutrie), and the fact that nowhere does a flip-top garbage can work.

"You have to take a piece of tissue paper and open the basket, then drop in what you want to throw out --Ugh!" says Jessica, recoiling, speaking for everyone, doctors and non-doctor alike.


The bar has been filling up as we have been talking. Galician Letter Day seems to be a good opportunity for a "knees up", as they say in England. However, the bar is mainly filled with men. At the table adjoining ours the beefier of the two Germans has left, while the quieter, a man who has walked the Camino six times, has been joined by a German with a face out of the Brothers Grimm. He is bald, with enormous blue eyes, a head like a ball, and a nose like a spud. He is ill-mannered: he stares at each of us at different times, emitting a wolf whistle every so often. He seems quite drunk.

Sara, Mei and Jessica explain that they have to stay out until 10 p.m., because only then will they be admitted to the albergue for the night. "Yes", they sleep in bunk beds, some of which have no ladder access. They are on the road by 7 a.m., because no one wants to stay any longer than they have to there. At night the snoring can make it difficult to sleep: Sleep apnea afflicts quite a few people in the albergues.

By the time I leave for my pension, the bar is heaving. I have to squeeze past a few men crowding by the door. I walk across the street Pension Vilarina: the bar there is busy, too. Palas de Rei has left me singularly unimpressed. Something contrary to the spirit of the Camino is at work here. I will be glad to leave tomorrow morning. My three friends will be long gone by the time I leave for Arzua tomorrow, but we have exchanged e-addresses. What is more, Mei is returning to Ireland on May 26 and will be there a few days in June, so I might see her there. Meeting them made what would otherwise have been a dispiriting evening into a scintillating one. Jessica needs to leave Santiago Saturday, but Sara and Mei will be at the Pilgrim's Mass at noon on Sunday at the Cathedral. I will try to make it there.