Leaving aside the idea that this Congress resulted in everyone suddenly knowing about the Torres now, this is saying that there are only four Portuguese caminos: central, coastal, Torres and Alentejo-Ribatejo. I don’t know how the article is classifying caminos but in any case it doesn’t take into account that there are three Alentejo-Ribatejo caminos (Nascente, Raia, Central Faro-Santarém) and it leaves out the CPI, Geira e dos Arrieiros, Minhoto Ribeiro and the Zamorano Português (and possibly more?).
My impression, after numerous chats with various Portuguese friends, is that this kind of hair-splitting about "who's in charge" is entirely typical of any large, public Portuguese enterprise. And of course now, there is a lot of funding for tourist endeavours everywhere outside the Algarve and the big cities (Lisboa/Porto)--with a fair proportion of it coming as transfers from the EU. So every municipality, every county, every region, is suddenly claiming jurisdiction, as then they get to control the money and where the paths are marked (ideally as much as possible through towns, right?)
I think this will go on for years. I get the impression, from some of the Spanish camino threads, that it went on (less perhaps the EU funding) for ages in Spain, as well; thus some questionable routing.
So I guess the question is...is it better to have the support, and try to ignore the wrangling, or to not get the support at all? Kind of a shame for the long-term volunteers like
Albertinho Rodrigo whose work made this all get off the ground in the first place! They seem to have been shoved aside, to some degree, by the bureaucracy.
[edit: Led others astray by referring to A when I meant R in the last paragraph. I'm thinking about the group of Portuguese volunteers who did so much to get the main Portuguese caminho north of Lisboa up and running!]