The Rain In Spain

So my Camino is done. I'd like to have walked the whole way, but in A Gudiña (which lies just inside Galicia and is fourth-fifths the distance between Seville and Santiago) I decided to battle with the elements no longer. I'd had snow which had completely blocked the Camino for a day. I'd had rain - persistent rain bucketing down day and night - which meant swollen streams had to be crossed. The stepping stones - if there were any stepping stones - were often deeply submerged. So much of the time I had wet feet - not a good combination with the extreme cold. I don't mind too much wet weather if it's warm, or cold weather if its all sun and blue skies. But the cold and wet together, often with a head wind too? No, thanks! (My gear had generally been OK, but my boots were deteriorating - and letting in water - and my overtrousers were also letting in water. I'd bought the trousers far too cheaply, and they weren't adequately rainproofed - a lesson to be learnt there!)

The weather forecast for this whole last week was uniformly awful for much of Spain. The country is in the grips of one of its worst winters for years. It had been deluged with rain in December and much of January - particularly in the south - and now this was continuing throughout February. Snowfall had been unusually heavy in the north, and it had even snowed in parts of the south which never normally see any snow. There had been bad storms and flooding in places like Cádiz, Jerez and the Canaries. Bridges had collapsed. Motorways had been shut for a while. Homes had been destroyed. The mighty Guadalquiver river had burst its banks east of Seville.

It was through such saturated countryside that I walked, so it was never easy from the start. Twice early on I had to turn back from rivers which were unfordable and seek an alternative route by road. I would spend a large part of each day just concentrating on the path before me - avoiding the deep, muddy bits where I'd sink in up to my ankles, skirting huge pools by clinging precariously onto the barbed wire fences or stone walls which edged the track. (Read Rebekah Scott on the Spanish weather here and here.)

So, in A Gudiña, I took a train to Ourense, and looked out over the lovely Galician countryside from the railway carriage window - little bright green fields enclosed by stone walls, densely forested hills. And rain. Lots of it! I spent a night in Ourense...

... and the next day took another train to Santiago. (In Santiago I heard there'd been a landslide in Ourense and that the river there was now dangerously high.) Though not even the rain could dampen my spirits on seeing Santiago Cathedral again. It's magnificent. One of my favourite buildings anywhere. Its Baroque western facade is one of great religious and architectural sights of Europe. Some cathedrals leave one feeling cold and unemotional - the interiors are so vast and ornate. Yet despite its hugh dimensions - inside it's high but narrow - this cathedral has a feeling of intimacy.

Here's my last scallop shell - set in a stone slab in the Plaza del Obradoiro, the impressive square which lies at the foot of the cathedral steps. I'd walked 800 km from Seville to A Gudiña over 40 days. That's an average of 20 km a day (though 7 of these days were for rest and exploration - when I'd stayed an extra day or 2 in historic cities such as Mérida or Cáceres, Salamanca or Zamora. I'm very glad I did this. It's not good to rush on all the time.) So my actual walking average - over 33 proper walking days - was just over 24 km a day. My walking speed averaged out at about 4 km an hour (5 km an hour if the going was good and I felt like pushing on; 3 km an hour if I was taking lots of photographs and felt like sauntering and stopping to look at things.)

Flamenco Dancer, Seville

The singer´s voice quavered and droned, thin and nasal like a muezzin´s. Jazzy chords spilled from a guitar: major then minor, fast then slow, confident then unresolved; cool and dark as a shaded courtyard in old Seville. Suddenly the dancer, Ascunción Pérez - dressed in red and black, with flashing eyes and jet black hair - strode quickly through a high doorway and mounted the small, wooden stage on the patio of the 18th century palace which is the Casa de la Memoria. All three - singer, guitarist, dancer - were young, local artists from Seville, performing flamenco in a modern style: fresh, unsentimental, but still firmly rooted in the old tradition. This was the real thing - not the castanet-clicking touts chasing the quick euro, nor the rough amateurishness you get from the hillside cave-dwellers above Granada. These were three serious students of the dance.

Complex rhythms flowed, faltered, petered out. Then began again, sinuously following a different direction, half-scripted, half-improvised. Hands clapped on the beat, off the beat. The dancer arched one arm over her head and stamped diagonally across the stage, head bent back, her body-shapes changing second by second, fingers stuck out at crazy angles like the tentacles of an octopus. She hitched up her dress, slapped her thigh. She was proud, provocative, defiant, sexy, coy, tragic, strong, yielding, ecstatic; one moment a majestic matriarch, the next a bashful señorita. Studied awkwardness gave way to still composure. She squatted, legs akimbo, as if giving birth - grotesque as a figure from a Paula Rego painting - then became all beauty and grace, like a Velázquez princess.

Her red heels went clack, clack, clack. Clack, clack across the wooden floor, as the tempo rose and quickened. All hands clapped in unison, as faster and faster she twirled and spun in a vision of red and black, in a frenzy of movement. Clack, clack, clack. For a moment she became all the women of Andalusia rolled into one: the smart, Spanish women parading in the gardens of the Alcazár, the Arabic gypsies scraping an existence in the shacks by the Guadalquivir river. At the crescendo she stood face-on to her spellbound audience: stiff, erect and proud; all fire, all heart, all corazón. The house erupted in swift, spontaneous applause. Olé! The lights came on and we shuffled off, mesmerized, as if a dream had ended.

(Posted from Mérida, on the Vía de la Plata, Spain.)