[Gocamino] Saint James Day

[Rebekah Scott]

        Greetings from Fuenterroble de Salvatierra, on the Via de la Plata, where our St. James Day was celebrated in an ancient sort of way...with a few twists! 
   
  Patrick and I stayed at the pilgrim hostel, where we were hospitaleros last week (and will be again, the last two weeks of august)... but for the big fiesta, we were guests. 
   
  We took the usual siesta, and were wakened at 6 p.m. by someone trying to open the door of our room -- early birds, checking out the hostel before the doings started at 7-ish.  Good time to get up. The kitchen was already buzzing with ladies from all three area parishes, bringing in all kinds of tortilla, empañada, cookies, drink, fresh veg.. We were forbidden to do any kind of work. Out on the patio, the men were hard at work on a last-minute job -- turning one of Don Blas´s old donkey carts into a proper vehicle for a fancy new wooden cross carved especially for an upcoming Romeria. Blas wanted to show off what it will look like when it´s taken on a 10-day pilgrimage the first week of August. He´s taking 8 of his carts and burros up to Santander for the long hike, and he´s enlisting all kinds of local help to make it happen. 
   
  Anyway, we draped the cross and cart with pretty fabric, and an arch was rigged up, La Mancha style, all laden with bells of every size that clanged and sang out with every bump in the road. 
   
  After many, many delays Blas did a blessing of the cart, the burros, and a new, beautiful painting recently finished in the salon, we then all 150-odd of us  processed down the street to La  Inglesia de la Virgen la  Blanca for a St. James benediction, as he´s the village patron. Best of all, in that 14th century, cool, dark,  stony shell of a church, a single beam of white sunlight came straight through the single window and illuminated the head and face of the Christ Triumphant over the altar! 
      
   
  The sound system didn´t work, and we got the blessings medieval-style, but all were happy -- and happier still after, when in the failing light the adults gathered around the food table and the  new Muscatel and the kiddies all ran out into the field for rides on the accommodating burros. 
   
  May St. James bless us all on his day. 
   
  rebekah

 				
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