Monte do Gozo- or Shouting in Public

Monte do Gozo is the last stopping point on the Camino before you head into Santiago da Compostela and it is the first place you get to see the spires of the Cathedral. There is a chapel dedicated to St Mark and a hideous concrete, glass, steel and bronze monument that commemorates the symbolic pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II.

I always feel excited and happy at Monte do Gozo. We have successfully brought a group of pilgrims 160 km across rural Galicia to this point. The pilgrimage is nearly over and the sooner we get into the city the more time I will have to explore a city whose granite heart hides an endless variety of charms and hidden corners. It bubbles with life and happiness, particularly of the pilgrims for whom this part of their camino is over.

This time I found myself in a grumpy mood as I shepherded the group down the last stretch on account of a group of cyclists who had camped themselves on the path between the monumnent and the chapel. They had pulled out a leg of Spanish ham and were busy shouting at one another over the loud American music that was pumping out of their support van. There is a Spanish word for this- jaleo- and like many words it is hard to translate because armando jaleo or making an offensive racket is not offensive here.

People frequently shout at each other in the street, for example, not in anger or aggression but simply because it seems better to call out, 'Hombre!' at the top of your voice than to walk a couple of metres further and talk. No one minds this, just as no one minds children running riot in restaurants, or the ever present television that fills a bar with noise even when there are no shouting locals to do it.

'Somos así,' said Ria my fellow guide. 'That's the way we are. You don't know what it's like to complete a pilgrimage like they have. They are just excited and happy. That's all.'

When I mentioned it on the phone to Carmen, she said something similar: 'Es nuestra naturaleza. Somos más expresivos que vosotros. It's in our nature. We're more expressive than you are. Here if you feel angry you give three shouts and get it out. Not like you. You walk around with a black face and don't say anything. You English are far too polite. You just hold it all in.'

Carmen has a way of turning things around so that I feel wrong-footed and defensive.

'So, I should have gone over and shouted at them?' I asked ironically, but really I knew she was right. In England I also object to people who shout at each other in the street when they could easily be understood talking and groups of young men and women making an offensive racket in public always make my hackles rise. The difference is that here no one agrees with me.

It seems so obviously a bad thing to be loud-mouthed and coarse that it makes me feel even more grumpy when I notice that no one else cares about it. Then I start to feel like the koala in the monkey cage. I get a similar feeling driving in Spain, but that will be another blog.