The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

time than thirty years ago, owing to the great development in Spain today of the bus routes between the various pueblos. Then women were not so accustomed to bus travelling as they are today, and I have vivid memories of their behaviour. No sooner did the crowded vehicle begin to skid round corners on its upward or downward corkscrew course than with one accord they were violently sick and we became a nightmare bus with pale, ghostly women craning their necks out of the windows on both sides like geese in a crate being driven to the market. I used in those days, as a prudent precaution, invariably to give up my window seat to any lady travelling in my proximity, so that she might lean out to her heart’s content. Nowadays women are acclimatized to buses. They also travel with liberal supplies of that infallible remedy azahar or orangeflower water which they employ in a variety of ways. Bus travel is becoming in the country districts a pleasant excursion, for the coaches are modern with good tyres, and are a great improvement on the bone-shakers of the past with their solid wheels. The bus drivers and conductors or cobradores, too, have evolved. The chauffeur has inherited some of the gruff, good-natured qualities of his forerunner the mayoral, who possessed such definite characteristics that he even inspired a special kind of Andalusian coaching song ( caleseras ). He is, however, more remote and self-centred than the portly, ruddy-complexioned coachman, who was able to cap a traveller’s tale and had incredible cubic capacity for tintorro, and we only meet him at the bars and cafés near the petrol stations. He is alert, practical, but nearly always teetotal, and will only accept a cup of black coffee. The cobrador is, on the other hand, the guide, philosopher and friend of the passengers. Our cobrador, for instance, on my journey to the village of Tiermas, was characteristic. He was youngish, sallow-faced, nervy, but a miracle of comprehension and humanity. A bit of a dictator, too, in his bus, for as he said at the beginning of our journey “todos no pueden mandar” ; if all the passengers insist on sitting in their favourite seats there will soon be the deuce of a row, or, as he said idiomatically, “se armará la gran mari-morena”.
    Our conductor organized his passengers, placing fat ones like myself next to slender ones and vice versa, and making sure that the parish priest had a seat to himself, if possible. Then came last-minute recommendations and requests from a long queue of housewives and others who clustered around the door chattering volubly, while the woman at the head of the queue gave her recommendations to the collector mostly by word of mouth. The sallow-faced cobrador had to commit these to memory: six yards of suiting, four dozen coat and trouser buttons, a keg of pure alcohol, a pestle and mortar, five packets of shampoo powders and so on, not to mention the man with guns who handed him a hare and a few brace of partridge to sell on the way. When I expressed my admiration of his powers of resistance and his memory he answered resignedly: “One has to be a jack-of-all-trades, Señor, and possess, besides, a good dose of patience and sympathy, especially for the novias, who hand me their love-letters; I have to deliver them personally to the novios, and on my return deliver the answer orally to the girls, as their parents generally won’t allow them to receive letters from boy friends. More complicated are the business messages I have to carry for farmers in the villages and for lawyers, scrawled in pencil on bits of paper that the devil himself could not make out. The trouble never ends, but, as they say, patience and shuffle the cards; ’tis a good job and enables me to see the world and I’d sooner brave it than be quill-driving in an office.”
    The Road of St. James follows the left bank of the river Aragon all the way from Jaca, but at the cross-roads of Puente la Reina our river is joined by its namesake Aragon, which rises near the forest of Oza. Aymery Picaud’s pilgrim Guide says that the Jacobean road passed through Tiermas, where he adds information about ‘royal baths that were always piping hot.’ These thermae were celebrated among the Romans; they still are in use, and we were told that the ancient stone bath was of Roman porphyry. The water is unpleasant and tastes and smells of sulphur.
    Above the pueblo in the mountains rise the ruins of the most famous abbey of