Centro Europeo de peregrinación Juan Pablo II

Really nice personal. Nice food and really good attention. Installations are a bit old but overall good. Lots of mosquitos in the night but is to be expected.

I went there today and there are 2 signs saying it’s closed.

For about two years, it hasn't been the same place. And it's not just that the alberg is closed to pilgrims because it's filled to the brim with refugees from Ukraine. The spirit and attitude of the place have also completely changed. From friendly and welcoming (as you can infer from old online reviews) to hostile and rude (you can check this in more recent reviews – from the last three years; I've attached a screenshot of the comments under the WordPress article). I completely agree with these opinions, and since they don't describe specific situations, I'll describe here, as an example, what happened to my wife and I there a week ago. We walked over 900 km of the Camino (a combined variant of the Norte-Primitivo-Norte route) and knew from our uncle that this was an alberg run by Poles. We'd been trying to reach them for a week, but they never answered the phone despite dozens of attempts, and their official website has apparently been down for a long time. We learned from other websites (Spanish and Polish news sites, as well as blogs) that they even accept pilgrims on the floor (we'd read a post about a record number of pilgrims one August, where people even slept in the chapel and dining room). After experiencing inhospitable behavior from many Spaniards on the road, we expected Polish hospitality here, and the photos there gave us reasonable hope of being accepted, even on the floor – so we didn't make reservations anywhere else. It was 9:58 PM. My wife was in serious condition; she couldn't even stand or sit up on her own. After entering the complex's open gate, I sat her down and began looking for the entrance to the building, which was indicated by a sign. Besides this sign (an information sign indicating an albergue), there were no other signs or information posted there. I opened the door a crack. A Polish volunteer told me that the albergue had been closed for a long time because it was filled with refugees. I was very surprised because I saw photos of pilgrims sleeping on the floor in the dining room and chapel, and boasted about the record number of pilgrims they had welcomed (probably over 360). The volunteer said it probably wasn't their place, but the other two albergas on Monte de Gozo, because there were so many places there. Later, it turned out she was wrong – the photos were indeed from here, but they were from a few seasons ago. She told us to look for places in the other two albergas. I asked for directions and if they didn't accept us there, would there be a space for us somewhere here, as my wife was in serious condition. The volunteer asked my question to the host, who was the decision-maker, but I didn't see him. But I heard his voice (he was Polish) replying, "They can't come back because they came in without knocking, and it's after 10 p.m., and that's not how it's done." I didn't go in, I just opened the door a crack, but sure enough, when I checked my watch, it was 10:02 PM. The volunteer knew I'd heard correctly, so she just looked at me with a slightly sympathetic look, as if it weren't the first time she'd had to close the door on someone like that. It was 10°C outside. We went to the other albergias, but they were already full and wouldn't let us in, despite freezing for 40 minutes in line. The 966 places were full. We had no shelter, and we couldn't return to the "European Center" because we hadn't knocked. One might ask, who knocks on the door when entering a large institution built by the government and donated to a diocese, called "European Pilgrimage Center"? In even the smallest albergias, you simply walk through the door to get to the reception desk. But here, in the European Center, knocking is expected. One might further ask, would St. John Paul II, whose name the institution bears, approve of such behavior? It's hard for me to imagine him throwing out a woman in serious condition, who and her husband have nowhere to sleep on a cold night because they arrived after 10 PM and didn't knock, just left the door ajar. Or perhaps Jesus would have acted this way? What gospel guides the owner of such a home? But I won't be their judge. In any case, the pilgrims deserve a fair warning.