Tuesday, June 4, 2024, 07:33
The parish shelter Hospital de pilgrims San Juan Bautista de Grañón has had a very special hospitalero since Saturday. This is Manuel Calderón Hidalgo, an Extremaduran born in Villanueva de la Serena, Badajoz, well known on social media for having walked the entire coast of Spain on foot after the pandemic.
After the adventure came conferences, talks at schools and a great presence in the media throughout Spain. “But really what I’m looking for is not followers, that’s why I have designed this new trip in a different way,” he explained while attending to the incessant trickle of pilgrims arriving at the hostel, “which always has the door open,” he stressed again and again. .
“On that journey I took advantage of the Camino’s infrastructure,” he acknowledged. «It was a great challenge for him who, from home (where the Mozarabic road passes) to Irún, could practically go along the Camino de Santiago: go up the Via de la Plata, reach Santiago, Finisterre, go around Galicia, take the North road and reach Irun. When I got there I realized that how easy that had been, because of the number of people around you, but once I left the Camino I was alone and the world. Even while I was walking along it, people saw me with the backpack and encouraged me: ‘Buen Camino!’, they told me. But when I left it (when logically your appearance is not what it looks like when you go to work), I became a beggar,” he explained.
When he finished, Calderón thought that he had to return “so much good” that he took from the pilgrim shelters. So, thanks to the advice of a Canadian hiker, he signed up to take a course in Córdoba for a weekend.
“Since the course I was assigned here to Grañón, and here I am,” he said happily, accompanied by the Australian hospitalists Déborah Mickle and Tina Piselman and the Spanish Íñigo Escartín.
And the hostel is, as he himself acknowledges, “one of the best on the Camino.” Beyond its facilities, which are carefully cared for by the hospitaleros and the parish priest, for the great hospitality it offers to walkers. For example, after the common dinner, a special ritual is celebrated in the church choir: “It is a time to reflect on what you have experienced,” Calderón explained. «Once it is over, some candles are taken out and a prayer is read in the languages of the people there. Then everyone stands up, holds hands, and prays an Our Father or whatever each person prays to their god, they can also stay silent,” he detailed.
After that a special circumstance occurs. «This is the only shelter on all the roads where a seal is not placed. The seal is a community embrace.
In this new adventure he already has a car, where there is a mattress and custom shelves with a pantry and all kinds of supplies for everyday life. Because he plans to visit 900 more enclaves in Spain, around twenty of them in La Rioja.
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