HISTORY OF THE HOSTEL
The History of the house where the Hostel is located goes back a century ago.
More than 100 years ago, Perfecto Crespo and Vicenta Lavín built this house after having 15 children. They were small farmers who lived in the lower part of the town. On the western slope of the hills of Güemes they built a large house with the help of their eldest sons. The house was somewhat removed from the town's urban core. Without more houses in their environment, people called it "Uncle Peuto's Cabin" (cabin for its solitude and "Peuto" perfect colloquial name.) In addition to a few cows and a large prairie land around the same house , Peuto built a humble smithy attached to the house ...
Grandmother Vicenta would die in 1937 and Grandfather Peuto in 1944.
The youngest of the 15 children, Laura, married Manuel Bustio staying with the parents in the same house.
In 1946, due to the hunger of the Spanish Civil War (36-39) Manuel and Laura closed the house and emigrated to Catalonia with their 5 children in search of a better life. Manuel Bustio will start working in the Figols and Laura coal mines with his eldest daughter in a textile factory in the Llobregat Basin (later the 3 following daughters would enter the same factory, while Ernesto, the only male with 11 years old would go to work as a shepherd in a farmhouse in the area of the pre-Pyrenees and, later, enter the Seminary of Solsona).
At the beginning of the 1960s, part of the family returned to Güemes and began to rehabilitate the abandoned and very damaged house.
In 1964 he retired from the Manuel Bustio mine, after 18 years of work and returned to Guemes where Laura is already living, his wife, Vicenta, the third of the 5 children and María Crespo, Laura's sister.
That is where a long stage begins that will take us to the current moment of the House-Hostel.
Ernesto left the seminary of Solsona (Lérida) to study theology at the seminary in Corbán (Santander 1959-63). After living 3 years in Tresviso, Picos de Europa (1963-66) as a parish priest and another 3 in Somahoz (1966-69), Valle de Buelna, he started an original experience in a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Santander, composed of a young people, mostly emigrants ...
Meanwhile, the family home in Güemes is undergoing a considerable rehabilitation process. It is prepared, at the same time, a small space under an addition to the house of only 20 m2 that we call "Refugio". There, there is a strong social activity with the presence of people from the San Francisco Neighborhood Clubs. We are talking about the year 1973. This activity will continue for a decade.
In 1979, Ernesto with 3 more people from the San Francisco neighborhood community of Santander, began an exciting experience entitled "TRIP TO THE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE".
It is a SABBATH YEAR through which they will travel aboard a land-rover in Africa and America to meet different people and cultures. The objectives are to know other realities and make them known to all the people who remain in the San Francisco neighborhood and who, in those moments, have lived and continue to live a strong social struggle.
This experience that will last 27 months (79-81) marks the turning point on the history and the birth of the Shelter.
Upon returning from the long trip (recently deceased Manuel Bustio), the current Albergue was created in what was the stable of cattle. An unclean space of 100 m2 where little by little, with much enthusiasm and creativity, it becomes a kind of museum of everything that has been seen and lived in the University of Life. Right from the beginning there is a special philosophy: volunteering and recycling material are the two pillars on which the Shelter is built and strengthened.
There there are meetings, meetings, coexistence, activities of young people (clubs of the Barrio San Francisco); you start a long walk without fixed goals more than service and utilization.
In 1988, faced with the future that the Albergue may have, Ernesto decided to buy a plot of land adjacent to the family home to develop a social project that can be seen encircled. And an Association is created "La Cabaña del Abuelo Peuto".
In 1991-92 a second Sabbatical Year takes place, shorter than the first. On this occasion a van is prepared and 4 people are headed towards India. We crossed Europe, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, four months in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and Spain. When this campaign is finished, 9 months have passed. Equally interesting and creative experience Upon our return we began to build the new hostel, segregated from the family home. It continues with the same philosophy of the beginning: volunteering, recycling material and a lot of creativity.
In 1999, Laura dies, Ernesto's mother and last descendant of grandparents Peuto and Vicenta. And the FIRST PILGRIM OF THE PATH OF SANTIAGO arrives at the Shelter. At that time the hostel is also open to pilgrims and we understand that it is the most important event in the whole trajectory of the Hostel. It is the meeting of two paths: the pilgrims to Santiago and all the people who travel another way, not to Santiago, but to the solidary encounter with those of us who are on the path of life. The Shelter receives and benefits from the great wealth that the pilgrims carry; and the pilgrim benefits from the shelter and his broad and generous philosophy.
From that moment on, these two paths emerge and are strengthened: the activities of the Camino de Santiago and, on the other hand, the different groups that use the Shelter: groups, workshops, schools, multiple meetings, coexistence ... Always seeking to create bonds of solidarity. All this will be explained later.
In the Albergue there are two properties: the family home belongs to the Bustio-Crespo family that has assigned it to the activities that are carried out as long as the direct family members live; and the new facilities that belong to a collective society where all those who have contributed money, work or ideas automatically become co-owners. However, nobody has any access to money, but it is a property transferred morally to the Third World. So, if the day that Ernesto and the people of his generation (all of them already elderly) are missing, if there is not a generational change, the facilities would have to be sold or rented and everything that would be destined for the Third World, since we we live very well (despite the harshness of the crisis) because others live very badly and from whose situation the so-called First World ...
Otherwise the Shelter does not enjoy any subsidy. It is maintained with the voluntary service and the free contribution that each person who uses the Shelter gives.
