I'm sympathetic to the view that a) there are a lot of subjective judgements at play when assessing albergues and b) the manner and mood of the hospitalero and/or the pilgrims can influence an experience. I've read above about places I stayed in 2012, and I would barely recognise them from the negative review. Which isn't to say that I think anyone is "wrong", more that we shouldn't treat these reviews as carved in stone, they are a snapshot of a given day for the most part. Yes, I note that a few albergues seems to come up again and again, so I might pay more heed to that. In general, all information of this sort is useful, but always subject to change!
When I walked the Frances (May & June 2012 and hopefully again this coming July and August), I was mainly fortunate. Some of the albergue experiences were excellent, some less so, but only one outright negative experience. Considering it was more than 18 months ago, I am reluctant to name the village and the albergue, as much may have changed in the interim; although my understanding is that this was a private albergue and my "run-in" of sorts was with the owner, so I don't know how much it is likely to have changed. Anyway, given the time that has passed, I just don't know if it would be fair to "name names", but my story stands in its own right. I wondered at the time if there was fault with me or my friends, were we being insensitive or selfish, but the passage of time hasn't altered how I felt at the time, which was that we were treated very poorly.
Anyway, so, here's the story: It would have been a longish walking day, around 30km. I was ahead of a few of my Camino friends. I entered a village having agreed with my friends that morning that we would stop there. There were two albergues on either side of the street, about 100 metres from each other, so I was willing to guess that competition between them might be quite fierce. I walked into the first albergue, which had a front bar area. No-one seemed to be around, so rather than wait I left and walked up the street to the other albergue. I was greeted on the doorstep by the hospitalero who was extremely friendly and welcoming. It was a fairly hot day, so I was glad of that reception. He seemed very obliging, he even told me to shower and freshen up before paying for my bunk, which, again, made me very happy. Having had 99.9% positive albergue experiences up to this point, I thought I was shaping up for one of the best experiences yet. Not long afterwards, one of my friends arrived, and he too received a positive reception. Another of our friends had, if memory serves, arrived a little bit earlier and checked into the other albergue (this might seem like excessive detail, but it matters!). The fourth of our group arrived a little bit later, and this is where things began to go awry. Apparently, the hospitalero did not like how my friend looked - he was an Italian with dreadlocks. When my friend arrived, the hospitalero was all smiles, and took his money, but then followed him up the stairs, gave his money back and said something to the effect of "I don't want your type here", the implication being that because my friend had dreadlocks, he assumed he was a drug-user. So, my friend came back down the stairs and relayed this to me. I didn't quite know how to react. The hospitalero had been extremely friendly to me and my other friend (neither of us had dreadlocks!). I felt there must have been some kind of misunderstanding, some miscommunication, language barriers and all that (though it seems Spanish and Italian are similar enough for speakers of one to understand the other). My friend with the dreadlocks then went down the street to the other albergue and joined our other friend, who had checked in there when she arrived in the town.
So.... this was June 2012. It was during the European Championships, and it was enjoyable to watch the football by evening. My other two friends were German and my Italian dreadlocked-friend was half-German, so we had all planned on watching Germany play that evening against Holland (big match!), but now we found ourselves split between two albergues with one friend not welcome in the place where I was staying. This meant that if we were all to watch the match together, then my friend and I staying in albergue B would have to walk down to albergue A, and that might have posed problems for the curfew. My German friend and I sat in the garden discussing this sudden awkward turn of events, in truth uncomfortable being where we were given the unfair treatment of our other friend. My friend asked the hospitalero if it would be possible to watch the football with our friends in albergue A and be able to get back in afterwards. The answer was no, so we decided the best solution was to watch the first half of the match with our friends in albergue A and then come back to albergue B and watch the second half without them. Not ideal, but not the end of the world. My friend then stepped into the bar again to order a drink and when he came back he said "trouble". He said the hospitalero had become visibly angry and was now saying that if we didn't eat our evening meal in his albergue then we wouldn't be able to watch the match on the tv in his bar area. Well, at this point, all trust was shattered. It was a needless situation in the first place. Pre-judging our Italian friend as he did created the problem. Had he not done so, our other friend would have ended up calling up to albergue B, watching the match with us, and no doubt we would have bought four meals, some wine, and a few beers. Instead, my other friend and I decided we couldn't stay in albergue B anymore. The situation had turned completely sour. The hospitalero had gone from extremely friendly to extremely hostile and I wouldn't have been comfortable eating any food that came from his kitchen. So, I brought my empty beer glass into the bar, set it on the counter, smiled and said "gracias", to which I got a grunt and an aggressive gesture with his jaw, without being looked at. Then, we went up to the dorm, packed up, threw on our rucksacks, and left albergue B (mercifully, without the hospitaltero seeing us) and walked 100 metres back the road to albergue A, checked in there, joined our friends, and made sure to put a lot of money in their cash register that night!
The whole scenario in albergue B seemed so against the Camino spirit. My Italian friend had walked the Frances in its entirety once previously, and had never experienced treatment like that. According to the hospitaltero in albergue A, the owner of albergue B was well known for turning on pilgrims if he perceived some slight. Assuming that to be so, I formed the impression that he wasn't very well suited to what he was doing with his life. Mercifully, it was business as usual after that, and from that point on all experiences were positive!
I did walk a bit with someone who stayed at that woman's place & he said he liked it, so different strokes for different folks, I guess.
. It was all a great learning experience, and we would have been hard-pressed to complain about anything after that.
