Hogar San Francisco, Santiago Compostella, 22nd August 1997
The town is thronged with 20th century pilgrims – tourists – and the crowds gather around the cathedral with the waking day. They drop coins to be photographed with a dog dressed clerical garb; an English county voice suggests a free the dog campaign. Silver sellers set up in the shade along the Plaza del Obradoiro. Worshippers and the curious file into the cathedral, pausing to push their hands into the holes worn into the stone columns of the Pórtico da Gloria by millions of their predecessors over eight centuries.
Mass. The bustle goes on in the background as tour guides wave flags to keep their following flocks in order; the priest loses patience occasionally and cuts into the litany to admonish outbreaks of disrespect. The words are unintelligible – I try to stand up and sit down at the right points. Two lay people read lessons, one a man in holiday shorts; a stern priest tells a woman to remover her soft bush hat, once, all women in church in Spain had to have their heads covered (or so I recall from the 60s).
Figures still shuffle through the cathedral at 6.30. They pass under the altar, glance at St James’s tomb, pause to take photographs and move on. Outside the low evening sun warms the grey stone.