Don Manuel Fraga was a lot of things to a lot of people, but "the main promoter of the modern
Camino de Santiago?" No. He was a tourism promoter, and an old-line Fascist who made his career serving under Franco. He sold Fascist Spain to sunshine-hungry northern Europeans who looked the other way, politics-wise, and preferred to see only the plastic PR version of Spain sold along with their Costa del Sol timeshares.
Franco and Fraga were both native Gallegos, they loved the
Camino de Santiago, and promoted it as a family holiday you could take in the car or on the bus -- the big granite waymarks and a few of the tall Santiago crosses are still visible along the N-120. Franco was an idealist, he used the Santiago cross as a personal symbol, and saw himself as the latter-day Matamoros, and promoted Santiago de Compostela and the pilgrimage as icons of good flag-waving, conservative, Roman Catholic Spain. (many Spanish people still see the red Santiago cross and say it makes them think of the Generalissimo.)
The
Camino de Santiago as we know it now blossomed well after Franco's death. Fraga didn't paint any yellow arrows, or promote pilgrim spirituality... but he handled the Xacobeo-style packaging of it -- the camino starts at the Galician border, it's all about bagpipes and Caldo Gallego, flaming botafumeiros and Monte de Gozo pilgrim palaces: packing as many consumers as possible into that last 100 kilometers.
I suspect he had something to do with the "100km. rule" that's turned the road from Sarria into Pilgrim Disneyland in recent years.
But I am cynical.