MOONINSPAIN

KA — RA — HEE — YOH

Having very little money to my name, when I walked the Camino de Santiago in 1995, my snacks were quite basic. I ate a lot of bread and cheese. Probably an exaggerated amount. No wonder my lifelong bowel problems ceased to exist, at least for the time being. Long loaves of white bread could be bought in even the smallest of hamlets for about 45 pesetas. And keeping up my cheese supply was unbelievably easy. Some of the best cheese cost only 150 pesetas for a big triangle that would last a few days.

One morning, we stopped for the first coffee of the day in a small town in Navarra. I am pretty sure I heard my newly adopted Spanish Grandpas talking about changing my nickname from “La Americana” to “La Turófila”. The five of them sat around a small wooden table drinking their carajillos while I leaned against the bar and cut off a chunk of cheese with my red swiss army knife and smashed it into some day-old bread I had in my backpack. My stomach was rumbling because I had fallen asleep the night before without even giving a thought to dinner. There was no way I could partake in a carajillo without some food in my belly.

The carajillo was introduced to me by Juan, who was not part of the Spanish Grandpas. Juan was, like myself, walking alone. This would be his tenth time doing the Camino de Santiago and he was a fountain of information for me. “On a cold morning, nothing warms your bones better”, he told a couple of days earlier when we had just met. “Siempre es mejor pedir un doble” was his sage advice. “Order a double shot.”

Juan had already hoisted on his backpack and left the bar to continue walking, but my Spanish Grandpas insisted on inviting me to a carajillo. The man behind the bar packed the coffee into the filter and that unmistakable noise began as the steaming brown liquid hissed out of the machine. The gentleman was dressed in a starched white shirt and black pants which seemed to be the national uniform for all males who worked in restaurants and bars. Even out here, in the middle of nowhere Navarra, this man was wearing his profession with pride.

After placing the cup on the saucer along with two sugar packets, he grabbed a bottle with the brand MAGNO printed in big red letters and poured it on top of the black coffee until it almost overflowed. He then left an extra shot glass of the Brandy on the bar next to it. “Por ser tú”, the gentleman said as he gestured towards me with his chin. “Just for being you”. It was barely seven in the morning and I was about to have two shots of brandy down the hatch.

I laughed to myself and thought about a new saying for the pilgrimage. The original saying goes “con pan y vino se hace el camino”. With bread and wine you can walk the camino. But as far as my early mornings go it should be “con pan, queso y un carajillo se hace el camino”. With bread, cheese and a carajillo you can walk the camino.

According to history, the custom of drinking carajillos began with Spanish soldiers in Cuba during the 19th century. The name could have evolved from the word for courage in Spanish, coraje. Or from the saying, al carajo — fuck it, or possibly from the Catalán, que ara quillo, meaning I am out of here. It can be prepared with different types of alcohol. Brandy, Licor 43, or any good old moonshine found in Spain or wherever you might be at the time.

With Juan and my Spanish Grandpas, we had it as a way to get our engines warm and running on those early camino mornings. They also had it religiously after a mid day meal to make sure all was digested and our inner pipes were functioning.

I don’t partake in many carajillos these days, but the memory will always take me back to those cold and dark mornings on the Camino de Santiago, thirty years ago.