That is true about a number of "traditions" which seem to have gained currency in recent years. Like burning clothes at Fisterra or indeed the growing practice of continuing on to Fisterra at all.
I don't mind the second -- it's a good enough stand-in for some kind of attempt to at least begin to make the return from Santiago a journey in itself.
But traditionally, people tended to either burn or abandon their shoes and staves ; but at Santiago not Fisterra.
Mounds of pilgrim's staves were erected for a while in the Middle Ages, 'til the City put an end to that rather silly and quite fire hazardous practice.
It persists to an extent in the throwing of pilgrim staves into the sea at Fisterra, but the advent of the hiking poles has mostly killed it.
Good riddance to silly pagan traditions ...
Or the recently invented 'shell ceremony' where prospective pilgrims are given a shell and a blessing before they leave home. Some time ago I read a post arguing that the custom is that the shell you carry should be given to you by a pilgrim who had already made the journey. News to me
Yeah well that's been an ongoing thing since the Renaissance.
The original custom is that only those having been to Santiago can wear the shell.
But your suggestion that you should receive your
concha from another in the proper circumstance is as correct as it is proper -- it was a principle as I set out on my second Camino from Paris in 1994, and for my sins, I was graced with a beautiful and very rustic shell from the legendary
Hospitalero pioneer Pablo Mesonero in Villalcazar de Sirga ...