Mary

Albergue de Peregrinos de Nájera. 12.59.

I was supposed to take the day off today, but as it’s a Sunday, nothing is open. No shops, no museums, zilch. So, since my intention to use my rest day to restock was somewhat redundant, I set out at the relatively tardy hour of half past six for Nájera.

Logroño must have been partying late into the night, like Jaca last week. There were more than a few amorous couples locked in each other’s arms in front of doorways on the streets running off the Gran Vía. The average age a Spaniard is able to leave home is now in the mid-thirties, which must make dating considerably more complicated here: the sexual revolution has happened, society has caught up, but the financial reality has got Spain’s youth in a stranglehold.

There are still Palestinian flags everywhere you go. It probably chimes with the mindset of the average liberal peregrino, but there’s another reason they’re so ubiquitous in this stretch of the Camino: we’re still in the Basque territories. And if any people are more likely to sympathise with an oppressed nation under the heel of a supposed colonising force, it’s the Basques, whose own freedom-fighting/terrorist organisation, ETA, only stopped its violent methods in the 1990s. I’ve seen one prayer in Hebrew for one of the captives still held by Hamas along the Camino, so it’s not entirely one-sided, but the Palestinian flag is far and away the most common flag along the entire Camino so far.

I reached the Parque de la Grajera about an hour after leaving the city. I was early enough to catch the night herons that seem to hang around the place. They have a somewhat patchy distribution across Europe, but they were here when I last did the Camino from Logroño to Burgos in the spring of 2023, so I was glad to see them again.

They were much too far off for a photograph, but the park’s red squirrels were a lot more obliging. Without the invading greys to worry about, they seem a lot more confident around people here, and so I was able to get quite close – or rather, it came quite close to me on its jaunty sortie across the bridge.

Today’s route featured a small pilgrimage of its own, to the shrine of La Virgen del Rocío. She is, in the humble opinion of this devotee, one of Spain’s most beautiful incarnations of the Virgin Mary. She certainly knows how to pick out a home, with her sanctuary within the Elysian marshes of Doñana National Park far to the south… and here she is, watching over a lagoon in La Rioja.

I remain convinced that it was partly her intercession – and that of the natural paradise where she resides – that healed me at last from last summer’s heartbreak, and it is partly because of that intercession that I am walking the Camino this summer… to say thanks. I owe her that much.

There were more squirrels to keep me company around the edge of the lagoon, including a boisterous couple that were quite unfazed by my presence, chasing each other up and down the trees on the edge of the lake. You have to travel quite some way in the UK to see these endangered creatures, since the American greys drove them out, but here they’re much more common.

La Virgen del Rocío is, among her other titles, a water spirit of sorts. Maybe that’s why she speaks to me more than the other incarnations across Spain that I’ve encountered: El Pilar, Remedios, Guadalupe… I’ve always felt some sort of connection to marshes and wetlands. It may seem odd that Mary, a woman from the hill country of Southern Galilee, should have such a devoted following in the wetlands of southwest Andalusia, but there it is.

El Rocío is the Spanish word for dew, and the Marian association with the Morning Star – Venus – as the herald of the rising sun is almost as old as her worship as the Mother of God.

I’ve often wondered whether the various Marian cults across the Mediterranean aren’t simply evolutions of the Roman tradition of the lares – guardian deities assigned to individual places – or perhaps even the Celtic peoples before that. In that light, it’s easy to see why other Christians find certain aspects of Catholicism hard to understand. But I think we’re all reaching for the same thing. Many Protestants would say they’re reaching for a more personal relationship with Jesus.

Well, what could be more personal than feeling an intense connection to God through a place that is so close to your heart?

West of Navarrete, the Camino meanders through a vast network of vineyards: a reminder that the tiny autonomous community of La Rioja punches above its weight in wine production (even if it can’t meet the demand on its own). It’s a 29km walk from Logroño to Nájera, but an easy one, and I was in town shortly after 12pm from a 6.30am start. I call that good going.

Reunited with the young folks tonight after an Irish exit and a hiatus of two days. Time for a sociable pizza night! I think I’ve earned it. BB x

Casa Los Tres Aires, El Rocío. 14.01.

The long-promised rains have arrived. Buckets of it. It began with a sudden gust of wind in the palm trees and a ripple over the lagoon, turning the mirrored surface of the water into a sea of silvery sand dunes. Some of the locals wandering in the square turned to the west and pulled their jackets about them. The savvier ones pointed and moved toward the shelter of the church. Then the darkening sky turned a pale grey, and the trees beyond the road disappeared behind an advancing sheet of rain. Just as the church bell chimed for half past, an almighty drumroll of thunder sounded in response and the heavens opened, and down it came: sheet rain, a wall of water, turning the sandy streets of El Rocío into rivers in a matter of minutes. By the time I made it back to my casa rural I was soaked to the skin – and more alive than I’ve ever been.

Some devotees of La Blanca Paloma – the White Dove, the nickname of the Virgen del Rocío – believe that her sudden appearance in the branches of an olive tree in the marshes of Almonte was a manifestation of the divine. More sceptical minds might be persuaded that the image was simply one of many hidden away from the conquering Moors and scattered across the countryside, forgotten until their chance discovery by bewildered countryfolk. Whatever you choose to believe, the Virgen del Rocío exerts a powerful influence over the town and its surroundings, bringing more than a million pilgrims to her shrine every year.

One legend has it that the townsfolk prayed for her intercession during the Napoleonic invasion, hearing that a raiding force of French soldiers was heading for the town. For whatever reason, they never made it as far as El Rocío, turning back at Pilas, just shy of thirty kilometres away. Maybe it was the unforgiving terrain of the marshes – or maybe it was the watchful power of the Virgen. Who knows? The fact remains that the village of El Rocío was untouched by both the Napoleonic War and the Civil War in the following century, a conflict which tore almost every town in Spain apart. It’s easy to see how many have come to believe that some great force watches over these marshes, shielding them from harm.

It hasn’t been able to protect them from everything. While it’s incredible to see Doñana restored to life, it’s important to bear in mind how it got into the state it was in: this time last year, the news were all full of woe, decrying the death of one of Europe’s last great wetlands as its life was slowly sucked out of it. Why, you ask? Climate change may be part of it, but the blame lies almost entirely at the feet of the monstrous theft of the land’s water by the agropiratas.

These mercenary industries have set up shop in the outskirts of Doñana and, over the last two decades, they’ve been draining its aquifers to grow strawberries on an industrial scale. Strawberries are a very water-hungry fruit, and the results have been catastrophic, causing the water supply to cascade, lakes to dry up and the local extinction of a number of species that can be found almost nowhere else, including the white-headed and marbled ducks, the salinete (a fish found only in Doñana) and the eel – formerly abundant and now almost completely eradicated from these marshes.

I could do a lot more for charity’s sake, but there are two causes I will not budge from. I will never visit Malta, on account of their refusal to abide by European laws concerning the protection of migrating birds (they still practise the vile tradition of bird-liming), and I will never buy strawberries from Spain, knowing what damage they are causing here. If only we could go back to a time before globalisation, when people were more patient, and prepared to wait for strawberries to be in season, for a short time each year…

It’s still raining out there. It cleared up for a few hours, and then the storm clouds came back with a vengeance. March 2025 has been one of the wettest months in Spain since records began, putting an end to four years of minimal rainfall. It hasn’t been unprecedented: the flash floods that swept through Valencia in October and claimed 232 lives are still a very recent memory. Even so, taken as a whole, the average rainfall over the last five years is still well below the average. Spain will need more consistent rain if places like Doñana are to survive in the long run.

That, and decisive action from the government on the villainous agropiratas and their strawberry farms.

I wanted to make the most of the park’s rebirth, so I went for a long walk in the pine woods of La Rocina to the south of El Rocío. A boardwalk trails stretches for five kilometres along the side of the river that feeds into the Madre de las Marismas, the lagoon that sits under the eye of the Virgen del Rocío. Like the Raya Real, this place is very dear to me: I used to come here as a boy and look for bee-eaters, hoopoes and scarab beetles in the scrubland at the trail’s northern edge.

My sense of smell – mercifully restored after a debilitating cold had me in its grip at the start of my travels – was assailed on all sides by Spanish lavender and curry plant, and every bush seemed to harbour a nightingale. I even saw one, singing high in the branches of one of the pines – a fairly impressive feat, since these master ventriloquists have the uncanny ability to seek out the most acoustic spots in the forest, whilst also remaining invisible to the naked eye as they perform their vast repertoire. I’ve included a recording I took below – have a listen and you’ll see what I mean.

I spent my last evening in El Rocío enjoying boquerones fritos and an incredible torrija – a Semana Santa speciality – in Restaurante La Canaliega, watching the sun set over the Madre de las Marismas. The town’s drains were working overtime to deal with the rivers that had formed in the streets, but there was still enough water in the main square to form a second lagoon, reflecting the Ermita’s unique shell-shaped doorway.

I would have traveled a thousand miles to see just this view, but the Virgen del Rocío saw fit to show me her rarest treasure of all on the day I arrived. I have come away with a new rosary of hers, so that I can offer my thanks wherever I am, and so that there will be some piece of her influence wherever I go.

I used to get the stuffing knocked proverbially out of me at school for defending my stance on faith, in spite of being a “rational thinker”. I stand by my beliefs to this day: I do think the world is a better place with a little more love and little more mystery. On the one hand, I adore the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake: the ability to look up at the stars and know their names.

But I also think it’s important to value the wisdom of the ancients. I may not be able to see the shape of a lion up there, but somebody must have done once to call a constellation Leo. And though it took me a long time to find Lynx, it’s taken me a lot longer to find the animal in the flesh. This year, Doñana – and whatever mystical force presides over these marshes – saw fit to show me a glimpse. You can call me credulous if you like, but that’s enough to make a man like me believe.

Not for nothing is the lake named the Madre de las Marismas: the Mother of Marshes. Doñana is feminine in every way, from its name to its essence: a provider, a life-giver, faithful, fickle and generous in turn. I have always said that Spain is my greatest love – but it’s probably fair to say that Doñana is that love crystallised into one place.

I have been gone too long. I must return someday. The fight to save these precious marshes goes on. BB x