For pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, the Great and Terrible hospitalero (the "h" is silent and it's not a hospital) can make or break your whole experience.
Hospitaleros are former pilgrims who volunteer to run an albergue (pilgrim hostel) for 15 days. Often, their personal wallets supplement costs like food and supplies, but because they control such luxuries as beds, showers, and the all-essential pilgrim's stamp, hospitaleros wield enormous power over a pilgrim's life.
Take, for instance, the fearsome nuns of León, whom I described in this previous Let's Go post. Besides strictly enforcing gender segregation and a 9:30 curfew, they inspected pilgrims' legs and insisted that those with bug bites disinfect their belongings and pay to have their clothes washed. God himself couldn´t save the woman who claimed a bunk by leaving her dirty backpack on it.
Hospitaleros range from those habit-wearing lionesses to the friendly Germans offering candy in Los Arcos to the Japanese couple playing traditional music in Astorga. They work all manner of day jobs and vary greatly in laxness of attitude. One rule they all follow: Only 1 night per pilgrim (except with a doctor's note).
In the tiny mountain town of El Acebo, I stayed in the parochial albergue run by the wise-cracking, clove-cigarette-chain-smoking Pilar and her son Miguel. Miguel walked the Camino when he was 8. When I was 8, I spent the summer playing American Girl dolls—commence feeling bad about my life.
After a communal dinner of homemade lentil soup and local organic cherries, Pilar, a couple other pilgrims, and I started chatting in Spanish, and she invited us to the back patio for chamomile-anise tea. We debated economics and traded Camino stories long after the other pilgrims fell asleep, and I felt rather rebellious as I zombie-walked through pitch black darkness to my bunk.