Spain.
It is the night of the second semi-final Champion League contest between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. I’ve made friends with a group of ten or so Spaniards coming out of an auberge in Jaca. We’re in the northeast, on the far less-traveled Aragon route, also known as the “silent route.” My group is not.
Only a few of us knew each other before the walk, but now we’ve become a rolling caravan of tobacco, blisters, laughter and beer for breakfast. The one woman who doesn’t drink with her tobacco leads the hungover through yoga in the mornings.
We’ve trekked through the hot, flat plains of Enériz, rimmed with mountains to the north, and the intermittently paved Roman road. We’ve spent the night in Arrés, where an old-time hospitalerio banged his fist on the table to tell the room where to accent Arrés and show, by way of white-knuckled percussion, that the “R” was not in any way a French “R,” which he demonstrated with equal verve and another pound. Speaking only for the hospitalerio…
