Early on my walk I met a Spanish couple; he was from the Navarre province, had grown up in the area, now lived in Madrid, and both he and his wife had walked El Camino in stages several times over the years. He lamented about the huge number of people who travel the pilgrim trail these days, a big increase from just a few years ago. We talked about who these newcomers are, what brought them to El Camino, and quickly agreed that some people shouldn't be on the Camino at all!
Walking El Camino should be a pilgrimage, he said. It should have a reason, preferably Christian, and a goal. Anything else makes the walk a travesty, he thought - almost an insult to St. James, in whose honor the trail exists, and to the Christian pilgrims who walked the trail over the past 1,500 years with hardships, personal sacrifices, and pain impossible to comprehend in today's world.
It is worth noting that one of the three qualifications stated by the diocese of Santiago for issuing the Camino certificate is for the pilgrim to "declare a spiritual or religious motivation" for having walked the trail. The officials discourage walks with a political agenda, such as a South Korean teenage group a saw, protesting against a new South Korean navy base.
Influenced by novels (one by a Nobel prize winner), recent sightings of celebrities, films, documentaries and tabloid reports, El Camino is now on countless "bucket lists" and in books with "The [pick a number] Things to Do Before You Die." Interests range from the extraterrestrial to wine tasting and following the latest tapas rage dictated by swanky travel literature. With the desire to have "been there, done that", El Camino is being gobbled up by all sorts of people, some of whom should not be there.
The mountain bikers on El Camino seem such an anomaly that I want to include them among those who should not be there (even if bicycling the Camino entitles the riders to the official certificate). The idea of making the journey in the shortest possible time with the head bent over a handle bar and with total disregard of every bit of the landscape except the path a few feet ahead is absurd.
