Certainly overall numbers for pilgrims to Santiago are up. But that doesn't mean they are up everywhere along every Camino at every time of the year. What I've been seeing is that some routes or sections are up a lot (Sarria to Santiago on the Frances, Porto to Santiago on the Portugues) others are not up so much or, by some reports, are actually down (SJPdP on the Frances).
But I'm not sure if those reports of reduced numbers on the earlier parts of the Frances are in comparison to six years ago or more recent numbers, or if they are just applicable to certain times of the year.
Thanks.
I am still in Spain and so I don't have access to the historical data that I downloaded from the Santiago de Compostela pilgrim office. I tend not to promise to do something too far in the future and so I have resisted pointing out how the reply post simply propagated confused thinking.
The original poster asked about the
Camino Frances from Carrion de Los Condes.
@Vacajoe replied with generalisations that are not applicable to this part of the
Camino Frances and I wonder if that person has even bothered to look at any actual data other than some some generic overall number of pilgrims from all Caminos. This person has not quoted the data source(s) that were used to back up their claims.
If I still have the interest in replying once I get home and I have access to the data then I will start another thread and I will include sources for any data that I quote.
One of the (new) issues with providing factual data is that the Pilgrim Office has changed their website. It used to be possible to access their data in a computer readable format but with their (now) usage of Microsoft's (less technical) tool access to their data has taken a backstep.
There have always been data quality issues with the Pilgrim Office data but there are some workarounds for that but by not making their data available in a computer readable format they have probably made it uneconomic to access their data for any real statistical purpose.
That, I think, is unfortunate because it makes it that much more difficult to show that the generalisations that most people quote on social media including this website are factually inaccurate.
Even more unfortunate, the French organisation that collects pilgrim information in SJPdP also seem to have ring-fenced their data and this used to be an excellent counterpoint for the Santiago de Compostela data.