In Gaby’s absence, our good friend Fernando gives me a call. We are all three going to be on the Camino de Santiago next week – the pilgrimage route to the supposed remains of St James, Apostle, leading across northern Spain to the granite city of Santiago de Compostela. We’ll be on foot, naturally. In deference to my age and supposed state of unfitness, Fernando suggests a training walk up on the hill above his village.
‘Come early, it’s getting hot.’ He doesn’t appreciate that I’ve been practicing on my own, like Woody Allen. But I accept with alacrity. We walk steadily upwards for most of two hours, from olive territory, across hillside scrub, into the bright sun and shadow-play of chestnut woods and on and up again into a thin forest of Pyrenean oak. Views of the sierra open out intoxicatingly and when we look down towards our starting point we feel a touch of righteous satisfaction at how far we have come already, how much we have climbed.
Tomorrow, May 24, is election d ay in Spain – municipal and regional governments art stake only, not the nation’s future. That’s where we start. I’ve been listening to a friend in Fuente Fria who says that in the villages it doesn’t matter who holds the town hall, whether it’s the conservative PP (the so-called Popular Party, wjho will soon be proven to be much less popular than they had believed) or the mildly left-of -centre socialist party, the PSOE. The mayors just get on and do as they see fit.
‘Not so’ says Fernando. ‘There’s a real difference in style, according to their basic political belief, really.’ He takes as his text