A visit with an old friend, a lunch on Mears Park, and a sneak peek at an inspiring film project brought me an unexpected new view of the cosmopolitanism of the Twin Cities.

The friend who visited is Patricia Winn, who handles press and public relations for the Tourist Office of Spain's Midwest headquarters in Chicago. I've known Pat since I was a travel editor in New York and she was hosting press trips to Spain. I went along on some of them, and fell in love with the country.

For her part, Pat is a vociferous lover of the Twin Cities. It's pretty gratifying to hear this woman, who lives in an iconic American metropolis and flies to Madrid and Barcelona and Seville and Granada as regularly as most of us drive to the mall, get excited at the prospect of trying a cool new restaurant in the Longfellow neighborhood or seeing the Walker's latest show.

On this occasion she was coming with her boss, Jorge Rubio Navarro, Consul in Charge of Tourism Affairs and Director of the Tourist Office of Spain in Chicago, to co-host a film showing and fundraiser for veteran Los Angeles filmmaker Lydia B. Smith's documentary-in-progress on the Camino de Santiago, the ages-old pilgrimage route from southern France to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. It's a 500-mile odyssey that still draws thousands of pilgrims, both secular and sacred. (Emilio Estevez's recent film The Way, starring his father, Martin Sheen, is the tale of a Camino journey.)

Fhima and Rubio

The plan was to meet Pat at a lunch for local travel journalists that she and Rubio were hosting at David Fhima's Faces Mears Park, then reconnect the next evening at the fundraiser, held at Unity Unitarian Church in Saint Paul.

Over some delicious tagines, my wife, Laurie, and I caught up with Pat and schmoozed a bit with the writers present. Fhima himself came to our table, all Mediterranean courtliness and charm. He exchanged greetings with Rubio in Spanish, and wished us bon appétit.

Rubio explained to the group just how major an industry tourism is in Spain: with 45 million people, the country welcomes more than 54 million tourists annually. "Eighty percent of them are sun-and-sand tourists from Europe, especially Britain and Germany," he said. "The other twenty percent are cultural tourists, mainly from the United States." But that twenty percent account for a disproportionate percentage of actual tourist dollars spent in Spain, so the American market is crucial.

El Camino on Film

I had originally assumed that the film showing the next evening would be a rather intimate affair, a medieval pilgrimage route on the Iberian peninsula not being what you would call a mainstream attraction. But as the seven PM starting time approached, more and more people began to file into the huge sanctuary of Unity Church, until the place was packed and more attendees were filing into the balcony. Many in the audience wore seashells pinned to their clothes—one shell for each completion of the Camino route. There were people with five or six shells. When Camino-walkers were asked to stand up, something like a one-quarter of the audience got to their feet.

Ruth Markowitz, the energetic local connector--and Camino veteran--who organized the event, spoke briefly; we heard from Judy Colaneri, whose Colorado-based Spanish Steps tour company organizes comfortable, van-supported Camino walking tours, and then from director-producer Smith herself.

The film was riveting even in its rough-cut state. Smith follows pilgrims along the route, highlighting the effect of the ancient journey on the real lives of people from around the world. It's more a document of lived life than a history lesson, but of course the immemorial natural and cultural beauty of Spain, from wheat fields to Romanesque cathedrals, plays a starring role too.

The Twin Cities Difference

Yes, I loved the movie, but as a loyal local, I was even more charmed when Pat looked out at the crowd jamming the Unitarian worship space and said, "We would never get this many people to come to an event like this in Chicago."

"Really?" I asked, a little incredulous.

"Really," she said. And then she launched into a little love note to the Twin Cities from the standpoint of Spanish tourism. "Ever since I was doing trade shows and leading informational seminars about Spain back in the Eighties," she said, "I've looked forward to coming here because I didn't have to explain the basics of Spain and Spanish culture, as I had to in many of the other midwestern cities in our territory. Twin Citians tend to be savvy travelers, interested in the arts and serious about culture."

For Pat, the success of an authentic Spanish restaurant like Solera in a relatively small city is an indication of our Hispano-savvy, as is the fact that our local Spanish cultural center, Casa de España, is thriving. "Any Spanish person can start a center like that in any city," she said, "but for it to do as well as yours is doing means that there is real interest and support for it here."

Boosterism and pointless civic competitiveness aside, I felt proud to have Pat confirm the feeling I have always had about this community--that we have a precious heritage of connection with and concern about the wider world. Tourism is only one face of it, of course, but the number of Camino walkers among the 284 people who showed up at Unity Church shows that even our tourism can be thoughtful, spiritual, history-minded, and healthy.