The creator of this type of signal (the yellow arrow) was Father Elías Valiña, in the 70´s, who appears first in the voting carried out to choose the ten most important characters in the history of the
Camino de Santiago.
"The
Camino de Santiago attracted numerous pilgrims until the mid-sixteenth century, but already in the seventeenth century, people began to forget the Apostle and the number of devotees who came to Compostela began to decrease alarmingly, and so continued the subsequent centuries. This strong regression of the pilgrimage also caused the roads to be abandoned due to lack of use.
This trend changed at the end of the 50s of the last century thanks, among others, to Father Elías Valiña, priest of the Lugo parish of Cebreiro, who promoted the restoration of the Hospital and Sanctuary of Santa María del Cebreiro, and renewed the traditional welcome to the pilgrim.
Later in the 70s, Father Valiña, began to sign the
Camino de Santiago, and section by section, he marked with yellow arrows the route from the Pyrenees to Santiago, after this hard work, he published the first guide on the Camino , in the 80s. The funny thing is that the color was not a thoughtful choice, it is simply that it was given by some road people who were painting the lines of the roads in the area, painting that at that time was yellow ".
The pilgrimage began to resurface in the 80s of the last century, although its explosion occurred in the decade of the 90s, with the celebration of the Holy Year of 1993, the Xacobeo, a party that was celebrated in style in Spain and with the one that wanted to commemorate a pilgrimage that represented the return not only to our roots but to those of all Europe.