Walked: 27Km
Yesterday the group I'm walking with dispersed among the private hostels in Guadix because there's no pilgrim albergues in this town. I ended sharing a room with an older gentleman from Bilbao. While having dinner I remarked offhand that in previous years I had lived in Spain illegally, but now I was here on a working visa.
When we came back to the room, while preparing to get into bed, he said: "you know, I'm a retired policeman and I think it's a shame that people like you have so many hurdles to emigrate. It seems we make things easier for people who are up for no good". I said that it's often easier to trick the system than it is to work with it. If the front door is closed, you will slip through the back door.
He said that his wife was very eager to visit Mexico, but he felt very uneasy going to a country where the police was corrupt. I said I understood, it must be very unsettling as a retired policeman to know that the state doesn't have your back in case anything bad would happen to them. I said "Often times the layman policeman must give a quota to his superiors in order to keep his job, so his task is to find people who are breaking the law in order to extort money from them so that they can keep their job. In fact, the more they extort the higher they raise, because they will promote policemen who bring in more money". He was horrified.
I said that, in the three countries where I've lived, I preferred the Spanish police, and I illustrated with an anecdote: in a night out I had a drink in my hand as I was moving between bars. A policeman saw me and said "throw that away, you're not allowed to drink on the street". I did as he asked, and I continued my way. Should I have been in Mexico, I would have only been able to walk away after giving a bribe. In Canada, I would have been given a ticket. Spain has leeway for making small mistakes.
As we got more and more comfortable with the conversation, I asked him: did you ever have to shoot somebody in your career? He said no, and he was grateful for that. "We will only shoot if our lives are endangered, never against someone who is running away". Then there was a moment of silence and he offered the only thing he regretted from his career:
"We were called in because there was a madman with a knife outside a bar. When we arrived the man was behaving strangely. I asked him to show me his pockets. He didn't listen. I submitted him with my baton, and when we searched him there was no knife. We would later learn that this man had mental issues, and he was the son of someone I knew. I deeply regret not reading the situation accurately, they should have called the ambulance and not the police. My partner and me went through a judicial process to clear us of wrongdoing, and when I came out of the courthouse the man was waiting for us, not to recriminate but to apologize because he had an episode. This made me feel even worse".
I wrote about a queer Irish guy I met yesterday. He's become friends with this man. He will often grab his arm while walking and is very affectionate with him. I could tell the policeman is not exactly comfortable, but he laughs and plays along. I would have never imagined he was a retired policeman. It made me more hopeful that things can be different, that not everyone who wants to work in law and order is power thirsty or all-too-willing to dominate others.
My dream last night:
I was walking the camino and I encountered a group of pilgrims. I was friendly and smooth at it. A girl was eyeing me and I started chatting with her. She was interested in me. I asked her to come with me, away from the group, to chat in private. We sat close to each other, while getting progressively more intimate in conversation.
Out of nowhere, my co-workers appeared "Oh Mark good thing we find you! Did you know our Factur-X integration with ChorusPro in France needs a new workflow action? Yeah in order to do this we first need the Peppol certification and we should get some designs ready". I participated with enthusiasm in the conversation. My new girl friend rolled her eyes, stood up and left.
"Oh no I think we cock-blocked you!" the CEO said. I pressed my lips and said "it's OK, so what were you saying about Peppol?".