Javier Rovira and Óscar Santoalla they are two young Civil Guard agents from the post of Monterroso (Lugo), that this July they patrol the Camino de Santiago, in the French section as it passes through the province of Lugo.
They are two of the three guards who work in the “Attention to the Pilgrim” service from the armed institute, all of them bound for the Monterrey barracks.
The three agents have been joined by others from different European Union police officers; three French, two Portuguese, two Germans and two Italian carabinieri.
“It has been a very rewarding experience with them. We have been fortunate that the agents who have come from abroad are wonderful people ”, boasts Javier Rovira.
– Javier Rovira and Óscar Santoalla, agents of the Civil Guard from the Monterroso post. / Radio Lugo (Cadena SER)
Óscar Santoalla tends and has specified that “they live in hotels, they do not come to the barracks, we pick them up first thing in the morning and they already do the service with us.”
A van and two support cars They are the tools with which the agents in charge of ensuring the safety of the road, on the French section, as it passes through Lugo, work.
A deployment that allows, “In the morning we will start in Portomarín, we will locate the position in the middle of the stage and we will finish in Palas de Rei”, and from there to Monterroso with the service already finished and rounding off that slogan of “good way” with that of also “good service”.
“We are for anything,” Rovira says, “such as collecting complaints or any kind of attention they need” from the hundreds of pilgrims who come to them.
Óscar Santoalla relates that “the most common”, which the pilgrims ask them, “is information about shelters, where to stay and where to eat”. “Sometimes they also ask us if there are tourist offices in the area,” he adds.
Pilgrims going to the Civil Guard pilgrim care post. / Radio Lugo (Cadena SER)
–
They have been in operation for almost a month, with the service since July 1 previously they were a month on probation. Since that day, what is most often reported are “lost documentation.”
“You are having a drink in a bar, you leave your backpack and when they go to look for it there is no money or documentation. This was the most common in past years, because so far in July there have not been any cases, only two misplaced documentation ”, Santoalla concedes.
A month this July in which it seems that normality is recovering in the different Jacobean itineraries, with avalanches of pilgrims what have led to many have even had to sleep, “in the open and in the open air” or in some cases they have had to resort to hotels in the area because the shelters, given the pandemic, are still not at one hundred percent of their capacity.
“In the last few days a lot of pilgrims have been noticed, there are sections of the road where there are not five meters where there are no people on foot or by bicycle,” Óscar illustrates.
Usually, these agents point out, the “anticovid protocols” are met. “There is relaxation especially when they are walking, as is legislated each group makes a bubble. In theory it is a bubble but we do not know if all those who are walking together are from the same group or not ”, stressed Rovira.
The “relaxation” that is also noticed “when the stages conclude, they go to a bar or a terrace but like the rest of the public do, you always relax a little,” Santoalla says.
However, the agents of this service have not had to resort to sanctions to correct the behavior of the pilgrims before the Covid, this also leads them to conclude that the way is “safe”.
Of course, on a day-to-day basis, they come across all kinds of situations, such as the case “of a pilgrim who got a piece of cloth caught on the brake and we had to load the bicycle into the van and take it to a workshop. reparation so that the woman could continue ”, revealed Rovira who emphasizes that Most of the pilgrims do the stages on foot or by bicycle. This year they are seen less on horseback.
But the most surprising thing, with humor they take it, is that it is not the first time that pilgrims come to this mobile office to ask that the Compostela seals them, that credential that proves where you have passed and then in Compostela make it official in the Bishopric. The last time was in the council of Portomarín.
Agent Javier Rovira details how they, as the Civil Guard, have a meritorious seal to file complaints or other types of proceedings.
“We have the seal of the Civil Guard to certify the complaints, so the other Tuesday of last week a pilgrim came to see if we would do him the favor of stamping the credential. We sealed it and one, two, three more began to come and at the end of the afternoon there were 150 ”, laughs Santoalla, who is reminded by Rovira that even one of them arrived with twenty credentials to have them stamped there.
In the end they had to give up, they had to “serenely” ask the pilgrims that this was not their task in the Plaza de Portomarín populated with visitors and that they resorted to the agents to stamp that end of the stage and also the beginning of the one that, to the day next, communicates Portomarín with Palas de Rei.
The agents of “Attention to the Pilgrim” of the Civil Guard, emulating the card of the armed institute wait “serene” at the foot of that mobile office, where they also come to offer water or even food for the exhausted pilgrim who resorts to them.
Now, in addition, they are accompanied by agents from other countries who act as translators before their countrymen, and they do have to report, Javier Rovira and Óscar Santoalla already make it clear that this is done before the Civil Guard.
July ends and these two agents, of the three that make up the service in Lugo, are ready to take over for the month of August, in this case it would be another guard from Monterroso and two from the Palas de Rei barracks.
Most of the pilgrims come from Spain, “Andalusian moves a lot”, and from the European Union the countries that contribute the most visitors are France and Germany.
A day that lasts throughout the day and that is appreciated by the walker who not only comforts by the degree of security that it offers but also by other alternatives and services that are selflessly given from that mobile office of the Civil Guard that fills up with kilometers these days , and that it was born with a desire for continuity. They consider that the service could be extended to next year, still Holy year.
–
