We went trotting into 2020 in our one-horse open sleigh. Everything seemed so merry and bright and normal.

Peaceable Projects was feeling good about the great big November fundraiser that brought 12,000 euros of donations and a 10,000 euro legacy to help Albergue Santa Cruz in Sahagun. Work started in the closed-down albergue in February…

Up on the mountain between Astorga and Ponferrada, the tumbledown Templar place got a section of new roof after a snowstorm broke through the bunkhouse. We bought a new stone for the Memorial Grove, in memory of Ian Kitchen, aka “SagaLout.” In February we had a big meetup in Astorga with the mayor, two council members, and several PPI volunteers; we discussed plans for a redesign; a Colorado pilgrim architect drew up a nice plan. We were rolling right along.

And then came Covid-19. Spain locked down hard. Donors didn’t know what to do, so they opened their pockets and purses, and sent money “to help camino businesses.”

PPI isn’t outfitted to fund private enterprise. We did what we could, connecting individual donors with people in need so they could pay them direct – a taxi driver, camino guides who were suddenly out of work, four stranded Argentine pilgrims who needed a ride to Madrid airport.

We paid for downspouts up on the Norte. We anonymously slipped some 50-euro bills into a donativo box on the Primitivo, to help buy new windows, and to another in Zamora, to just keep going. We helped Egeria House help the homeless in Santiago de Compostela. We bought ten new wool blankets for the refugio at El Acebo. Far as I know, they’re still in the packages.

We helped small non-profit albergues in La Rioja and Izarra and Zafra survive, even though they never opened this year. The Franciscan albergue in Tosantos re-did their wooden-plank floors, and we bought the shellack. We facilitated the transfer of a car from one non-profit to another, we bought a pair of hiking sandals for a traveling Franciscan friar, we bought a laptop for a convent when theirs went kaput. We funded “GoFundMe” drives for albergues in Burgos, Vega de Valcarce, and Huesca.

Albergue Santa Cruz in Sahagun opened up in July, and stayed open into October. The water is hot and fresh and clear, thanks to all you guys. Three of the Marist Fathers who run the albergue joined the Camino Ditch Pigs Cleanup Crew in November. In three days we cleared litter from Calzadilla de la Cueza to El Burgo Ranero, and we all slept in our own beds every night.

Peaceable Projects didn’t do any huge projects in 2020, but we were really not founded for those anyway. We bought firewood, groceries, snow tires, lumber, a ladder, dog food. We translated, we handed out masks and gloves, we washed some very dirty laundry and sleeping bags, we picked-up and dropped-off, and sometimes yelled and cried. Some of what we did was simply hand-holding. A couple of times the money ran out anyway, the albergue was sold or shut down forever, and longtime hospitaleros’ dreams were left to die along the road.

Some things are dangling loose. We raised 3,000 euro to help buy a camping caravan to house hospitaleros at Albergue Monasterio San Anton in Castrojeriz, but now I can’t track down the guy in charge. There’s something so wonderfully Spanish about that. The renovations at the Memorial Park are stalled-out, the memorial plaques are squirreled away in the Ecce Homo chapel for now, jealously guarded by the mayor of Valdeviejas.

And the money keeps coming in, sometimes it seems like too much money. I do not like sitting on my wallet. But I have a feeling that will change soon.