I finished my fourth Camino two days ago. This time I hiked the Primativo from Oviedo. About 325 kms. I am hanging out in Bilbao for a few days waiting on my flight back to Germany. In the meantime Athletic Club of Bilbao are playing tonight against Dortmund and tonight I am a Bilbao fan.
I do respect their system of only bringing in Basque associated players. It limits them, but they have been pretty successful and have never been relegated.
There is a lot of passion here in the town and I’ve seen so many people wearing their jersey around.
It was good. There’s a lot more people hiking than previous caminos. Starting to get crowded in places. Not complaining, it is still nice to disconnect from everything and just hike and enjoy Spanish food and drinks.
Whilst the Basque only thing could be a hindrance, I guess given how deep rooted and passionate Basque national identity is most people in the region are likely to be Athletic Bilbao or Real Sociedad fans, so that probably lures in a lot of local young talent that have pure intention to play for the club because of the strong Basque identity, or grew up as supporters of the club.
