Crossroads of Pamplona

In front of the city hall in Pamplona´s old city, two very famous, but completely different, paths intersect. One path is the run of the bulls towards the bull ring during the annual festival made famous by Hemingway (after whom the bull ring is now named). The other is the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route, which enters Spain just north of Pamplona near Roncesvalles and stretches westward to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The pilgrim path is marked by small yellow arrows on the pavement and buildings of each city. Occasionally, a merchant will paint a yellow arrow pointing at his door, perhaps as a joke, perhaps expecting the waylay the unwary pilgrim.

Starting in the 9th century AD, after the alleged discovery of the remains of St James the Apostle in the remote northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula, streams of pilgrims seeking redemption for their sins walked the path (actually many paths) towards the cathedral in Santiago. However they didn´t get to see the remains of St. James at the end of their journey -- the coffin remains forever sealed, although it is paraded around the streets once a year. In special Holy years, however, pilgrims who complete the trip are promised a plenary indulgence -- full forgiveness of their lifetime sins.

I decided that, for an atheist like myself, a complete indulgence would be a nice insurance policy, and, lucky for me, the Pope has declared 2004 to be one of the Holy years. To use the Camino´s well-organized system of alberges (cheap, often free, hostels) it is necessary to first obtain the Pilgrim´s Credential, which is stamped at the alberges along the way. Pilgrims who complete the last 100 km of the Camino on foot receive the Compostela certificat at the cathedral in Santiago. I decided to walk about 200km of the Camino, starting in the town of Ponferrada, just west of León in Castilla y León province.

In the morning, I waited patiently for the Pamplona cathedral to open in order to get my Credential (a week in advance), but was refused because I did not intend to begin my pilgrimage in Pamplona. Technically this was true, but, like a lot of people, I intended to visit many of the cities along the Camino, which was the primary connection between Spain and the rest of Europe for hundreds of years, by car.

From Pamplona I drove north to Roncesvalles, a key crossing point in the Basque Pyrenees and the site of the legendary events of the Song of Roland. From there, I crossed into France again (my fourth and shortest yet detour into France on this trip). The leaves were turning, and the rolling fog gave the forested hills around me a mystical feeling. The same red-and-white villages were scattered on both sides of the border, which wasn´t surprising since both regions were predominantly Basque.

I spent almost 4 days in Navarre and Bizkaia, two of the Basque regions, and heard the unusual-sounding Basque language (unrelated to any other European language) spoken quite a bit, but not nearly as often as Catalan in Catalunya. Curiously, many Basque cities have two names, one in Spanish and another in Basque, which don´t sound anything alike. For instance, Pamplona is Irún, and San Sebastian is Donostia.

I arrived in San Sebastian, a large resort town on the Atlantic ocean near the French border, and went swimming at the first beach I found. It had warm greenish-blue water and perfectly shaped waves that appeared out of a completely flat surface several meters offshore. Then, I went off to find a small pension in the historic quarter, where I was going to stay for a couple of nights to recuperate from my mountain adventures.