We begin this chronicle with a correction and an apology… Yesterday we hadn’t yet entered La Mancha: Requena is in the province of Valencia. We ask for understanding for these pilgrim chroniclers, cut off from the outside world, who can’t check their sources and usually don’t even know what day of the week it is.
As we were saying: today we really have changed autonomous community. And we did it with pain, not only because we are leaving behind a beautiful land, but because today’s stage was a champion’s one: 44 km. We started walking an hour earlier to have less time in the sun (yes, yes, you read that right: we woke up at 2 in the morning…).
Most of the stage ran through a beautiful mountain landscape, with all sorts of trees and bushes. We discovered that people here have a great passion for private property, as numerous signs showed: we had to jump a couple of fences and all day we had the feeling of being where we shouldn’t be.
The sun beat down hard from 10 o’clock, and we had to keep drinking all the time. The stage was sooooo long; in fact, we finished at 15:00. Luckily Luis came to cool us down at both stops: at the second, like an angel come down from heaven, he brought us some lemon slushes for which we will be grateful for all eternity.
After that break came the grand premiere of the song by the “Rolling Smokes”, the band formed by some of our boys. Here’s a verse for you, so you can savour the immense talent among us:
“Ferran está muy loco,
Pero loco por Amor,
Y estos peregrinos
Están aún peor”.
The end of today’s stage brought us to a most unusual place for pilgrims like us: a spa called “Baños de la Concepción”. We are staying in luxury bungalows, where tonight we will be able to enjoy the greatest of gifts: beds with mattresses and sheets.
For Mass, Don Antonio and Don José Fernando, priests of this diocese and fellow seminarians of Fr Ferran, came to celebrate it with us. Don José Fernando presided and preached to us about the family. It is the place where we are loved simply for who we are, where there is no need to pretend, where we don’t put on those masks we so often wear with our friends. He encouraged us to live like that with God: without pretending, without expecting him to love us more or less for our virtues, because his love doesn’t depend on that. He also reminded us that most of us are called to the vocation of marriage, and that for that reason we must seriously ask ourselves with whom we will set out on the true pilgrimage of our lives.
Dinner was an all-you-can-eat buffet that brought out everyone’s true essence: there were those who ate 200 chistorra sausages, those who lived exclusively on crêpes and cake, the girl who helped herself to a plate of vegetables on her own initiative…
We’re off to rest with full stomachs after such a full day.
See you tomorrow, parents!