[Gocamino] Yellow Arrow "Dumped"

[Blaroli@aol.com]

Hello you all,
During the 1980s  Elias Valinha, a priest from O Cebreiro, would fill up his 
Citroen GS automobile with cans of yellow paint and would traverse the French 
Route painting the now ubiquitous yellow arrows.  He started doing so when he 
became aware that many pilgrims, particularly foreign pilgrims,  never made it 
to Santiago after getting lost for lack of reliable markings, or spent a 
great deal of time trying to find their way.

Father Valinha earned a PhD studying history in the prestigious Pontifical 
University of Salamanca,  writing his Dissertation on the Medieval Routes to 
Santiago. 

His enthusiasm about the Camino took him to very municipality in the French 
Way  and to the creation of the Societies of Friends of the Camino all over 
Spain.

Because the ETAs (Navarra  separatists who have created a great deal of 
terror in the region) used to hide out in the Pyrenees, the Civil Guard, suspicious 
of a lone individual painting bright yellow arrows all over the place, 
arrested and questioned Father Valinha one time.   He told them (a la Saint Roque) 
that he was preparing northern Spain for an "invasion".  Father Valinha died in 
1989, at sixty years of age, and did not live to see the predicted invasion 
by pilgrims that materialized in 1993 and has continued unabated.

While recognizing the symbolic and practical significance of the yellow 
arrow, which superseded a small pilgrim drawing and the traditional shell as symbol 
of the Camino, the powers that be have chosen a new Camino symbol in 
preparation for the next Holy year, 2010.  After selecting as finalists  19 of the 
couple of hundred  proposals considered, they selected a symbol created by 
graphic designer Nacho Cao and submitted by Ocean Visual.
It consists of the bottom of five feet, two fairly large on the left side (a 
man's and a woman's), another fairly large on the right side and two smaller 
ones at the bottom (a boy's and a girl's) between the feet there is a space 
with various dots and a small blue map of the Camino.  The feet bottoms are 
streaked with ovaloid concentric circles and the bottom of the toes are painted 
blue (the big toe) and yellow, the other ones. (Blue and yellow are the colors of 
the European flag).
The rationale is that the design will convey the "affectrive dependence" of 
the Camino with an  image more agile and dynamic through the basic element of 
visual communication
-.....I'm NOT making this up..... you can see the thing by going to:
www.elcorreogallego.es/index.php?idNoticia=48732
(May 25 edition of the newspaper)
In a further challenge to reason, this new symbol is meant as a tribute to 
Father Valinha!

While some people have welcomed a "new and modern" symbol of the Camino, most 
critics had seen it as a cause of derision and better suited as an ad for a 
"Foot clinic for circus performers", or a "Corns medication center".  
Personally, it looks to me like a sneakers subliminal ad aimed at finger-painting 
pre-schoolers..

Oh well!

Regards,

Rosina