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Looking at this from the outside I would say how great that your sister has been inspired to walk... because of you.. that's wonderful! Maybe this time she needs the security of her plans but in the future she may choose differently. My sister has also asked to walk with me a bit and the idea of the albergues horrifies her (and my husband actually) but I'll compromise a little on the group accommodation if it means I get to walk a while with my nearest and dearest... and share the camino with them... and maybe there's a bit of a camino lesson in there for me too?
With regard to the Compostela being a certificate awarded by the Catholic Church for those who walked the Camino for religious/spiritual reasons, just check out - I just did - the websites of Camino tour companies. All those I looked at made a point of saying that those walking with them will qualify for the Compostela when they reach SdC. No mention was made that the Compostela is in recognition of having walked the Way as a religious pilgrimage or the possibility of receiving the alternative distance certificate for those who walk for non-religious reasons. This is misleading and wrong in so many ways.
You keep using the word 'surely' but I don't think it means what you think it means.If they are walking for 4 months and with a chaperone, surely they don't need the Compostela as proof of having walked.
Well, if I google the definition I see "with firm belief" "with assurance or confidence" ... If I gogle further Oxford dictionary says "used to show you are almost certain of what you are saying and want other people to agree with you". Also "used with a negative to show that something surprises you and you do not want to believe it"You keep using the word 'surely' but I don't think it means what you think it means.
I walked from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago in 2014 and loved every moment of it. But I doubt that I would have done it had I not done the final 100 km some years before that. I am sure that like me, many people are attracted to the camino after doing the shorter walk. As a non-Catholic and agnostic, I am also a little worried about a proposal which seems to suggest that there be some distinction between the real pilgrim and the mere hiker. The charm of the camino is that it treats all walkers as equal and provides what they need - for some that might be religion, for others, like me, an opportunity for peace and thought. Discrimination between groups of walkers may weaken the wonder of the way.Dear friends, the Fraternidad Internacional del Camino de Santiago, an activist group comprised of historians, sociologists, hospitaleros, and camino busybodies, last weekend met in Sarria to debate the latest issues and decide how to solve some problems.
Most of you know that one of our more controversial proposals is petitioning the cathedral to extend the 100 km. required to earn a Compostela certificate to 300 kilometers. Everyone asks why.
So I translated (pretty awkwardly in places, I know!) the explanatory document, a paper written by Anton Pombo, a camino historian who has lived much of the current renaissance on the trail -- he was one of the first to paint yellow arrows to Finesterre. This document was presented to the cathedral dean and cabildo last week. It has NOT been approved or put into effect!
PROPOSAL TO EXPAND THE MINIMUM DISTANCE REQUIRED FOR AWARDING OF THE COMPOSTELA to 300 KILOMETERS
THE GENESIS OF THE ROAD
Since its inception, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was never a short-term undertaking. It was not a local or regional shrine that gradually gained fame through popular acclaim and miracles. On the contrary, it sprang into being with fully-formed international appeal: It led to the officially recognized apostolic tomb of Santiago the Greater. It managed to bring together not only Christian rites and symbols, but incorporated practices of past cults as well, as evidenced by legends of the translation of James’ body and the possible Celtic pilgrimage to Finisterre.
Alfonso II the Chaste, King of Asturias and Galicia, made the first political pilgrimage to Santiago after the rediscovery or "inventio" of the tomb between AD 820 and 830. The first documented pilgrims appeared in the 10th century from beyond the Pyrenees, devotees from from Germany and France, but we do not know their itinerary.
By the 11th century the “French route” along the Meseta was already established as a long-distance roadway to and from Europe, equipped with a network of pilgrim shelters. The pilgrimage to Santiago took its place alongside Jerusalem and Rome as one of the three great classic treks of Christianity. Santiago stood at the western end of the known world, following the direction the sun in the day and the Milky Way in the night. For pure symbolic value, Santiago surpassed Jerusalem and Rome. The Jacobean legend spread through Europe in the tales of Compostela in the times of Bishop Gelmirez, and above all, in the Codex Calixtinus. The universal dimension of this pilgrimage shines through medieval literature, inspiring works like the Historia Caroli Magni et Rotholandi or “Pseudo Turpin.” This book recounts the exploits of King Charlemagne, whose army supposedly opened the Camino pathway, guided by a sweep of stars all the way to Compostela and the ocean beyond.
The same tone was maintained into the late Middle Ages, despite the Reformation. The Counter-Reformation infused the pilgrimage with a focus on Catholic dogma. Walking to Santiago became a visible, living profession of religious faith. Pilgrims trickled in from all over the world. Centuries passed, but the Way of Santiago never lost its international character.
DECLINE AND REBIRTH OF THE PILGRIMAGE
But over time, the triumph of Liberal thought and the overwhelming idea of progress consigned the ancient pilgrimage path to a relic, something anachronistic and meaningless, reserved for vagrants and beggars. By the 19th century, the Compostela pilgrimage was practically extinct.
Other European Christian shrines and pilgrimages enjoyed a limited success, so archbishops Payá y Rico and Martin Herrera sought to stir up a new public religious devotion to St. James. The relics of the apostle were re-discovered after 300 years, so the local authorities tried to revitalize the pilgrimage with their meager means, using local processions and day-trips to Santiago as well as other holy sites, to at least keep the flame burning.
These local “romerias” became popular throughout Spain, upholding regional pride but thwarting the idea of traditional pilgrimage on foot. Twentieth-century “National Catholicism” manipulated the Compostela pilgrimage, focusing the faithful on arriving at the goal. The Way itself was downplayed, and the old walking routes were practically forgotten.
When the European Postwar intellectual and social crisis struck in the 1950s, it was foreigners, not Spaniards, who rediscovered the value of the pilgrimage. The Paris Society of Friends of the Camino was founded in 1950, with the Marquis Rene de La Coste-Messelière, among those who took the first timid steps.
The first Spanish association formed in Estella in the 1960s with the involvement of Paco Beruete and Eusebio Goicoechea, and registered itself in 1973. They delved into the study of the Jacobean pilgrimage as part of the Medieval Weeks festival in Estella, with their eyes always trained on the 11th and 12th-century "golden age" they hoped may someday revive.
This same historicist and romantic spirit, with the Codex Calixtinus as the main reference, is what inspired Elijah Valiña Sampedro, a man misunderstood in his time, to conceive the idea of revitalizing the foot pilgrimage on the French Way. Not beginning from Sarria, his own birthplace, nor from the Galician frontier, despite his being the pastor of St. Mary of O Cebreiro, Don Elias took the long view. He traced the most direct route to Compostela, gradually joining section to other sections. He understood from the beginning the Way in its original sense, as a geographic whole. Thus, with the collaboration of different people all along the route, he went to work to recover and mark with yellow arrows the better-known and documented French Way, from the Pyrenees to Compostela. He cooperated closely with the French, who did the same with France’s great historic routes, described in the famous guide book V of Calixtino: Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy and Arles.
Thus was reborn the Camino de Santiago in the 70s and 80s of the last century, with the utmost respect for history and tradition. The French Way was recovered first, and the remaining historical itineraries soon followed. It was an exemplary process, performed selflessly from the bottom up with the support and generosity of associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago, which multiplied since the 80s. The Amigos groups’ first major achievement was the International Congress of Associations of Jaca (1987), chaired by Elias Valiña as Commissioner of the Way. A new credential was established, drawn from a prototype from Estella, to serve as a safe-conduct to contemporary pilgrims, allowing the use of pilgrim accommodations. No minimum distance was established to claim a Compostela at the Cathedral.
FROM THE XACOBEO TO NOW
The year 1993 was a Holy Year, and pilgrims poured into the shrine city. The regional government of Galicia rolled out "Xacobeo," a secular, promotional program that claimed to “parallel” the religious celebration while developing advertising campaigns and marketing strategies. The Xacobeo slogan, "All the Way," summed-up its fundamental objective: to transform the Camino de Santiago into a great cultural and tourist brand for Galicia, and squeeze the maximum benefit from a tourist phenomenon ripe with possibilities for community development. It was at this point that the still-incipient mileage requirement of the Compostela was set at 100 km.
The "All the Way" and 100 km idea, despite Galicia’s good-faith construction of a public network of free shelters, immediately created tensions with the plan developed by Valiña and the worldwide Jacobean associations. The minimum distance, which fit perfectly into the plans of the Xunta de Galicia to “begin and end the Camino in Galicia,” ended up creating a distorted image of what and where the Camino de Santiago is, a distortion that appears now to be unstoppable, and threatens to undermine and trivialize the traditional sense of the Compostela pilgrimage. For many, the pilgrimage is understood only as a four- or five-day stroll through Galicia – a reductionist view antagonistic to the historical sense of the great European pilgrimage tradition.
This distortion has contributed to the ongoing transformation of the road into a tourist product. Tour operators and travel agencies offer the credential and Compostela as marketing tools, souvenirs that reward tourists and trekkers who walk four or five days of the road without any idea of pilgrimage, using and monopolizing the network of low-cost hostels intended for pilgrims. The consequence of this abuse is the same seen at by many sites of significant cultural heritage: the progressive conversion of the monument or site to a “decaffeinated” product of mass tourism. It is a theme park stripped of “boring” interpretive information from historians or literary scholars, suitable for the rapid entertainment of the new, illiterate traveler unable to see any value in an experience that is not immediately recognizable and familiar. The consumer cannot enjoy an experience that requires preparation, training, and time, so the marketers provide him with a cheap and easy “Camino Lite” experience. Likewise, even as the Camino is commodified, its precious, intangible heritage of interpersonal generosity and simplicity is lost. Without this “pilgrim spirit,” the Camino’s monumental itinerary becomes a mere archaeological stage-set.
In recent years, the number of pilgrims from Sarria, Tui, Lugo, Ourense, Ferrol and other places just beyond the 100 km required to obtain the Compostela, has grown steadily, according to data provided by the Pilgrimage Office of the Cathedral of Santiago. The true number of “short haul” pilgrims is, according to studies prepared by the Observatory of the Camino de Santiago USC, much higher. More than 260,000 pilgrims registered in 2015, but at least as many again did not register at the cathedral office – they had been on the road without reaching the goal (they ran out of time) or they did not collect the Compostela due to lack of interest or knowledge. Many of these unregistered "pilgrims" respond the low-cost tourist or hiker profile.
According to figures for 2015, of the 262,516 pilgrims who collected the Compostela, 90.19% arrived on foot. More than a quarter left from Sarria (25.68%, more than double the number who left from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, a traditional starting point 500 km. away in France). Another 5.25% walked from Tui; 3.94% came from O Cebreiro (151 km); Ferrol 3.31%; 2.17% from Valenca do Minho; 1.17% from Lugo; Ourense 1.09%; 0.84% to 0.57% from Triacastela and Samos, to name the next major starting points. Add up all these “short haul” pilgrims, and you see they are 44.02%, almost half of the total. Their numbers rise each year. If we add to this figure those arriving from points far less than 300 km from Santiago de Compostela the number is well over 50% of registered pilgrims.
We are faced with a choice. This “short-trip pilgrim” dynamic is only slowed by foreign pilgrims, who naturally fit better into the traditional role of the long-haul pilgrimage. We can keep silent and give up the Camino to the short-term interests of politicians, developers and agencies seeking only immediate benefit or profits. Or we can resist, try to change the trend, redirect the Camino to its role as an adventure that has little to do with tourism. We can reclaim the long-distance Camino and the values that make it unique: effort, transcendence, searching, reflection, encounters with others, solidarity, ecumenism or spirituality, all of them oriented toward a distant, shared goal.
Some object, noting that long ago, every pilgrim started from his own home, no matter how near or far it was from Santiago. Documentation and history say that Santiago de Compostela was never a place of worship for the Galicians, who had their own shrines and pilgrimages. Outside the pilgrimage, Santiago never had a great relevance for Spaniards, let alone the majority of foreign pilgrims.
The FICS proposal to amend of the Compostela requirements by the Council of the Church of Santiago is not intended to solve at a stroke the problems of the Camino. Requiring a walk of 300 kilometers will not ease the overcrowding on the last sections, or stop the clash between two opposite ways of understanding the pilgrimage. It aims at the symbolic level, and hopes to establish a new understanding of the Way which dovetails with the traditions of the preceding eleven centuries .
1. We hope first to re-establish to dignity of the Compostela, which has lately become an increasingly devalued certificate granted without requirements or agreements attached. It is handed out as a prize or a souvenir at the end of a Camino de Santiago package tour, without a flicker of its religious or spiritual connotation.
2. The contemporary revival of the Camino has made every effort to restore and protect historic pilgrimage routes. The Camino trail is hailed for its cultural interest, and its heritage value is listed by UNESCO. The same care should be exercised should be taken to preserve the practices of the pilgrims on the Santiago trail – the “pilgrim spirit” that forms the Camino’s intangible heritage. Thousands of pilgrims still experience the unity and life-changing power of the trail in its utter simplicity. Their needs cannot be sacrificed to “inevitable concessions to modernity.”
3. Many Gallegos who profit from the Camino see the pilgrimage as a passing phenomenon. They take a short-sighted view of history, and disregard the efforts and claims of neighboring communities of Asturias and Castilla y Leon, and Portugal, all of which have striven to document, retrieve, waymark and revitalize their historic itineraries of the reborn pilgrimage. Despite what Gallego tourist authorities say, the Camino de Santiago does not begin at the Galician border. The road should be treated as a whole, not segmented into independent and disjointed portions, and even less monopolized by the end-point. Even more oddly, ancient camino routes are being marketed as a paths without a goal – a phenomenon apparent in France, or on tributary routes that converge with larger axis, (ie, the Aragonés Camino, Camino del Baztán, San Adrian Tunnel, etc.), sold as "Jacobean routes."
4. This proposed distance is fixed at about three hundred kilometers. This figure is not a random whim – it is drawn from the very first recorded pilgrimage route to Compostela, now known as Camino Primitivo. This is the route taken by the courtiers of Oviedo to the honor the relics of the “Locus Sancti Iacobi,” a distance of 319 km.
Likewise, the 300 km. distance also fits the subsequent 10th century shift of the main pilgrimage axis to the French Way. King Garcia moved his court from Oviedo to Leon, a move confirmed by Ordoño II. Leon is 311 kilometers from Santiago.
Other places linked to the pilgrimage also fit within the scope of this distance: Aviles (320 km), the main medieval port of Asturias, where seaborne pilgrims landed; Zamora (377 km) in the Via de la Plata; Porto (280 km) in the Central Portuguese Way; or the episcopal city of Lamego (290 km) on the Portuguese Way of the Interior.
5. The basis of our proposal is historical: The original geographic triangle of Aviles, Oviedo, Leon. There should therefore not be an arbitrary numerical figure, but a reasonable level of average distance for the traditional pilgrimage on foot, by bicycle or on horseback, in the vicinity of 300 km. This puts the spotlight on the different Jacobean long-distance routes. It meets the needs of contemporary pilgrims for good transportation links and population centers to launch them on their way.
6. The change is not intended to exclude pilgrims whose limited schedules prevent them from walking more than 100 km, an objection that always is posited against increasing the required mileage. The road can be done in stages, at different time periods, or very slowly, all of which are perfectly valid ways to obtain the Compostela.
7. Attempts to divert pilgrims from the overcrowded French Way and Portuguese Route have been unsuccessful, and there are still overcrowding problems on the final, Galician stages, especially from Tui and Sarria onward to Compostela. Municipalities along these roads face serious problems at times of peak pilgrim traffic.
8. The Galician administration’s appropriation of the Camino de Santiago and marketing efforts that describe only the last (Galician) 100 km, have left large areas of Galician Camino “high and dry:” Samos, Triacastela or O Cebreiro, on the French Way; Castroverde, Baleira and A Fonsagrada on the Primitivo; Ribadeo, Lourenzá, Mondoñedo, Abadín and Vilalba on the Northern Way; The whole province of Ourense east of the capital, Allariz, Xinzo, Verin, A Gudina, on the Sanabres Route. The citizens of these camino communities provide the same services to pilgrims, but are unfairly cut from the pilgrimage map by a regional administration so sharply focused on the 100-kilometer radius.
9. The 300-kilometer shift will ease the antagonism that rises up between long-distance pilgrims and those on a “short haul.” Attempts to turn the last stages of the Way into a pure tourist “Disneyland” will be blunted.
10. An exception must be made for the English Way, a route with historical documentation reaching back to the Late Middle Ages. Pilgrims came by sea to Ferrol (120 km) and A Coruña (75 km), now one of the most marginalized of all itineraries. Finally, another logical exception must be granted to disabled pilgrims, for whom the 100 km limit should continue.
The request to extend the 300 km the minimum for obtaining Compostela is part of a more ambitious global proposal. FICS proposes a new management model for public shelters, with preference given to long-haul pilgrims, and eliminating abuses by commercial interests who profit from the albergue network. Government bodies should stop viewing the pilgrimage to Santiago as a tourist product or leisure experience. It is imperative that management and promotion of the Camino be removed from the Tourism department and returned to the oversight of Culture and Heritage.
We view The Way in its original medieval incarnation, as a great long-haul odyssey. The current dynamic strips away the meaning of the Camino for the sake of pecuniary interests and inevitably leads to a complete break with tradition. Those of us who work on and for the Camino – Amigos Associations, albergues, volunteers, government agents, and the Compostela cathedral itself -- are directly responsible for preventing this process of consumption. Our position is not just a romantic notion, much less a reactionary stand. It is made from deep respect for an ancient tradition that some shortsighted people are distorting for the sake of economic opportunism. If we do not stand up, they will soon destroy the magic that is the Camino de Santiago.
Anton Pombo, International Brotherhood of Camino de Santiago.
Sarria, March 12, 2016
I completely agree . Why make preparation and train for months to achieve something significant both physically and spiritually when thousands of walkers,many of whom even have luggage transported take all the rooms for what is basically a short weeks holiday and something to put on their CV. It is my view that should this change happen then a signicant drop in what are really tourists will happen and The Way will resume its true meaning.Dear friends, the Fraternidad Internacional del Camino de Santiago, an activist group comprised of historians, sociologists, hospitaleros, and camino busybodies, last weekend met in Sarria to debate the latest issues and decide how to solve some problems.
Most of you know that one of our more controversial proposals is petitioning the cathedral to extend the 100 km. required to earn a Compostela certificate to 300 kilometers. Everyone asks why.
So I translated (pretty awkwardly in places, I know!) the explanatory document, a paper written by Anton Pombo, a camino historian who has lived much of the current renaissance on the trail -- he was one of the first to paint yellow arrows to Finesterre. This document was presented to the cathedral dean and cabildo last week. It has NOT been approved or put into effect!
PROPOSAL TO EXPAND THE MINIMUM DISTANCE REQUIRED FOR AWARDING OF THE COMPOSTELA to 300 KILOMETERS
THE GENESIS OF THE ROAD
Since its inception, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was never a short-term undertaking. It was not a local or regional shrine that gradually gained fame through popular acclaim and miracles. On the contrary, it sprang into being with fully-formed international appeal: It led to the officially recognized apostolic tomb of Santiago the Greater. It managed to bring together not only Christian rites and symbols, but incorporated practices of past cults as well, as evidenced by legends of the translation of James’ body and the possible Celtic pilgrimage to Finisterre.
Alfonso II the Chaste, King of Asturias and Galicia, made the first political pilgrimage to Santiago after the rediscovery or "inventio" of the tomb between AD 820 and 830. The first documented pilgrims appeared in the 10th century from beyond the Pyrenees, devotees from from Germany and France, but we do not know their itinerary.
By the 11th century the “French route” along the Meseta was already established as a long-distance roadway to and from Europe, equipped with a network of pilgrim shelters. The pilgrimage to Santiago took its place alongside Jerusalem and Rome as one of the three great classic treks of Christianity. Santiago stood at the western end of the known world, following the direction the sun in the day and the Milky Way in the night. For pure symbolic value, Santiago surpassed Jerusalem and Rome. The Jacobean legend spread through Europe in the tales of Compostela in the times of Bishop Gelmirez, and above all, in the Codex Calixtinus. The universal dimension of this pilgrimage shines through medieval literature, inspiring works like the Historia Caroli Magni et Rotholandi or “Pseudo Turpin.” This book recounts the exploits of King Charlemagne, whose army supposedly opened the Camino pathway, guided by a sweep of stars all the way to Compostela and the ocean beyond.
The same tone was maintained into the late Middle Ages, despite the Reformation. The Counter-Reformation infused the pilgrimage with a focus on Catholic dogma. Walking to Santiago became a visible, living profession of religious faith. Pilgrims trickled in from all over the world. Centuries passed, but the Way of Santiago never lost its international character.
DECLINE AND REBIRTH OF THE PILGRIMAGE
But over time, the triumph of Liberal thought and the overwhelming idea of progress consigned the ancient pilgrimage path to a relic, something anachronistic and meaningless, reserved for vagrants and beggars. By the 19th century, the Compostela pilgrimage was practically extinct.
Other European Christian shrines and pilgrimages enjoyed a limited success, so archbishops Payá y Rico and Martin Herrera sought to stir up a new public religious devotion to St. James. The relics of the apostle were re-discovered after 300 years, so the local authorities tried to revitalize the pilgrimage with their meager means, using local processions and day-trips to Santiago as well as other holy sites, to at least keep the flame burning.
These local “romerias” became popular throughout Spain, upholding regional pride but thwarting the idea of traditional pilgrimage on foot. Twentieth-century “National Catholicism” manipulated the Compostela pilgrimage, focusing the faithful on arriving at the goal. The Way itself was downplayed, and the old walking routes were practically forgotten.
When the European Postwar intellectual and social crisis struck in the 1950s, it was foreigners, not Spaniards, who rediscovered the value of the pilgrimage. The Paris Society of Friends of the Camino was founded in 1950, with the Marquis Rene de La Coste-Messelière, among those who took the first timid steps.
The first Spanish association formed in Estella in the 1960s with the involvement of Paco Beruete and Eusebio Goicoechea, and registered itself in 1973. They delved into the study of the Jacobean pilgrimage as part of the Medieval Weeks festival in Estella, with their eyes always trained on the 11th and 12th-century "golden age" they hoped may someday revive.
This same historicist and romantic spirit, with the Codex Calixtinus as the main reference, is what inspired Elijah Valiña Sampedro, a man misunderstood in his time, to conceive the idea of revitalizing the foot pilgrimage on the French Way. Not beginning from Sarria, his own birthplace, nor from the Galician frontier, despite his being the pastor of St. Mary of O Cebreiro, Don Elias took the long view. He traced the most direct route to Compostela, gradually joining section to other sections. He understood from the beginning the Way in its original sense, as a geographic whole. Thus, with the collaboration of different people all along the route, he went to work to recover and mark with yellow arrows the better-known and documented French Way, from the Pyrenees to Compostela. He cooperated closely with the French, who did the same with France’s great historic routes, described in the famous guide book V of Calixtino: Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy and Arles.
Thus was reborn the Camino de Santiago in the 70s and 80s of the last century, with the utmost respect for history and tradition. The French Way was recovered first, and the remaining historical itineraries soon followed. It was an exemplary process, performed selflessly from the bottom up with the support and generosity of associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago, which multiplied since the 80s. The Amigos groups’ first major achievement was the International Congress of Associations of Jaca (1987), chaired by Elias Valiña as Commissioner of the Way. A new credential was established, drawn from a prototype from Estella, to serve as a safe-conduct to contemporary pilgrims, allowing the use of pilgrim accommodations. No minimum distance was established to claim a Compostela at the Cathedral.
FROM THE XACOBEO TO NOW
The year 1993 was a Holy Year, and pilgrims poured into the shrine city. The regional government of Galicia rolled out "Xacobeo," a secular, promotional program that claimed to “parallel” the religious celebration while developing advertising campaigns and marketing strategies. The Xacobeo slogan, "All the Way," summed-up its fundamental objective: to transform the Camino de Santiago into a great cultural and tourist brand for Galicia, and squeeze the maximum benefit from a tourist phenomenon ripe with possibilities for community development. It was at this point that the still-incipient mileage requirement of the Compostela was set at 100 km.
The "All the Way" and 100 km idea, despite Galicia’s good-faith construction of a public network of free shelters, immediately created tensions with the plan developed by Valiña and the worldwide Jacobean associations. The minimum distance, which fit perfectly into the plans of the Xunta de Galicia to “begin and end the Camino in Galicia,” ended up creating a distorted image of what and where the Camino de Santiago is, a distortion that appears now to be unstoppable, and threatens to undermine and trivialize the traditional sense of the Compostela pilgrimage. For many, the pilgrimage is understood only as a four- or five-day stroll through Galicia – a reductionist view antagonistic to the historical sense of the great European pilgrimage tradition.
This distortion has contributed to the ongoing transformation of the road into a tourist product. Tour operators and travel agencies offer the credential and Compostela as marketing tools, souvenirs that reward tourists and trekkers who walk four or five days of the road without any idea of pilgrimage, using and monopolizing the network of low-cost hostels intended for pilgrims. The consequence of this abuse is the same seen at by many sites of significant cultural heritage: the progressive conversion of the monument or site to a “decaffeinated” product of mass tourism. It is a theme park stripped of “boring” interpretive information from historians or literary scholars, suitable for the rapid entertainment of the new, illiterate traveler unable to see any value in an experience that is not immediately recognizable and familiar. The consumer cannot enjoy an experience that requires preparation, training, and time, so the marketers provide him with a cheap and easy “Camino Lite” experience. Likewise, even as the Camino is commodified, its precious, intangible heritage of interpersonal generosity and simplicity is lost. Without this “pilgrim spirit,” the Camino’s monumental itinerary becomes a mere archaeological stage-set.
In recent years, the number of pilgrims from Sarria, Tui, Lugo, Ourense, Ferrol and other places just beyond the 100 km required to obtain the Compostela, has grown steadily, according to data provided by the Pilgrimage Office of the Cathedral of Santiago. The true number of “short haul” pilgrims is, according to studies prepared by the Observatory of the Camino de Santiago USC, much higher. More than 260,000 pilgrims registered in 2015, but at least as many again did not register at the cathedral office – they had been on the road without reaching the goal (they ran out of time) or they did not collect the Compostela due to lack of interest or knowledge. Many of these unregistered "pilgrims" respond the low-cost tourist or hiker profile.
According to figures for 2015, of the 262,516 pilgrims who collected the Compostela, 90.19% arrived on foot. More than a quarter left from Sarria (25.68%, more than double the number who left from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, a traditional starting point 500 km. away in France). Another 5.25% walked from Tui; 3.94% came from O Cebreiro (151 km); Ferrol 3.31%; 2.17% from Valenca do Minho; 1.17% from Lugo; Ourense 1.09%; 0.84% to 0.57% from Triacastela and Samos, to name the next major starting points. Add up all these “short haul” pilgrims, and you see they are 44.02%, almost half of the total. Their numbers rise each year. If we add to this figure those arriving from points far less than 300 km from Santiago de Compostela the number is well over 50% of registered pilgrims.
We are faced with a choice. This “short-trip pilgrim” dynamic is only slowed by foreign pilgrims, who naturally fit better into the traditional role of the long-haul pilgrimage. We can keep silent and give up the Camino to the short-term interests of politicians, developers and agencies seeking only immediate benefit or profits. Or we can resist, try to change the trend, redirect the Camino to its role as an adventure that has little to do with tourism. We can reclaim the long-distance Camino and the values that make it unique: effort, transcendence, searching, reflection, encounters with others, solidarity, ecumenism or spirituality, all of them oriented toward a distant, shared goal.
Some object, noting that long ago, every pilgrim started from his own home, no matter how near or far it was from Santiago. Documentation and history say that Santiago de Compostela was never a place of worship for the Galicians, who had their own shrines and pilgrimages. Outside the pilgrimage, Santiago never had a great relevance for Spaniards, let alone the majority of foreign pilgrims.
The FICS proposal to amend of the Compostela requirements by the Council of the Church of Santiago is not intended to solve at a stroke the problems of the Camino. Requiring a walk of 300 kilometers will not ease the overcrowding on the last sections, or stop the clash between two opposite ways of understanding the pilgrimage. It aims at the symbolic level, and hopes to establish a new understanding of the Way which dovetails with the traditions of the preceding eleven centuries .
1. We hope first to re-establish to dignity of the Compostela, which has lately become an increasingly devalued certificate granted without requirements or agreements attached. It is handed out as a prize or a souvenir at the end of a Camino de Santiago package tour, without a flicker of its religious or spiritual connotation.
2. The contemporary revival of the Camino has made every effort to restore and protect historic pilgrimage routes. The Camino trail is hailed for its cultural interest, and its heritage value is listed by UNESCO. The same care should be exercised should be taken to preserve the practices of the pilgrims on the Santiago trail – the “pilgrim spirit” that forms the Camino’s intangible heritage. Thousands of pilgrims still experience the unity and life-changing power of the trail in its utter simplicity. Their needs cannot be sacrificed to “inevitable concessions to modernity.”
3. Many Gallegos who profit from the Camino see the pilgrimage as a passing phenomenon. They take a short-sighted view of history, and disregard the efforts and claims of neighboring communities of Asturias and Castilla y Leon, and Portugal, all of which have striven to document, retrieve, waymark and revitalize their historic itineraries of the reborn pilgrimage. Despite what Gallego tourist authorities say, the Camino de Santiago does not begin at the Galician border. The road should be treated as a whole, not segmented into independent and disjointed portions, and even less monopolized by the end-point. Even more oddly, ancient camino routes are being marketed as a paths without a goal – a phenomenon apparent in France, or on tributary routes that converge with larger axis, (ie, the Aragonés Camino, Camino del Baztán, San Adrian Tunnel, etc.), sold as "Jacobean routes."
4. This proposed distance is fixed at about three hundred kilometers. This figure is not a random whim – it is drawn from the very first recorded pilgrimage route to Compostela, now known as Camino Primitivo. This is the route taken by the courtiers of Oviedo to the honor the relics of the “Locus Sancti Iacobi,” a distance of 319 km.
Likewise, the 300 km. distance also fits the subsequent 10th century shift of the main pilgrimage axis to the French Way. King Garcia moved his court from Oviedo to Leon, a move confirmed by Ordoño II. Leon is 311 kilometers from Santiago.
Other places linked to the pilgrimage also fit within the scope of this distance: Aviles (320 km), the main medieval port of Asturias, where seaborne pilgrims landed; Zamora (377 km) in the Via de la Plata; Porto (280 km) in the Central Portuguese Way; or the episcopal city of Lamego (290 km) on the Portuguese Way of the Interior.
5. The basis of our proposal is historical: The original geographic triangle of Aviles, Oviedo, Leon. There should therefore not be an arbitrary numerical figure, but a reasonable level of average distance for the traditional pilgrimage on foot, by bicycle or on horseback, in the vicinity of 300 km. This puts the spotlight on the different Jacobean long-distance routes. It meets the needs of contemporary pilgrims for good transportation links and population centers to launch them on their way.
6. The change is not intended to exclude pilgrims whose limited schedules prevent them from walking more than 100 km, an objection that always is posited against increasing the required mileage. The road can be done in stages, at different time periods, or very slowly, all of which are perfectly valid ways to obtain the Compostela.
7. Attempts to divert pilgrims from the overcrowded French Way and Portuguese Route have been unsuccessful, and there are still overcrowding problems on the final, Galician stages, especially from Tui and Sarria onward to Compostela. Municipalities along these roads face serious problems at times of peak pilgrim traffic.
8. The Galician administration’s appropriation of the Camino de Santiago and marketing efforts that describe only the last (Galician) 100 km, have left large areas of Galician Camino “high and dry:” Samos, Triacastela or O Cebreiro, on the French Way; Castroverde, Baleira and A Fonsagrada on the Primitivo; Ribadeo, Lourenzá, Mondoñedo, Abadín and Vilalba on the Northern Way; The whole province of Ourense east of the capital, Allariz, Xinzo, Verin, A Gudina, on the Sanabres Route. The citizens of these camino communities provide the same services to pilgrims, but are unfairly cut from the pilgrimage map by a regional administration so sharply focused on the 100-kilometer radius.
9. The 300-kilometer shift will ease the antagonism that rises up between long-distance pilgrims and those on a “short haul.” Attempts to turn the last stages of the Way into a pure tourist “Disneyland” will be blunted.
10. An exception must be made for the English Way, a route with historical documentation reaching back to the Late Middle Ages. Pilgrims came by sea to Ferrol (120 km) and A Coruña (75 km), now one of the most marginalized of all itineraries. Finally, another logical exception must be granted to disabled pilgrims, for whom the 100 km limit should continue.
The request to extend the 300 km the minimum for obtaining Compostela is part of a more ambitious global proposal. FICS proposes a new management model for public shelters, with preference given to long-haul pilgrims, and eliminating abuses by commercial interests who profit from the albergue network. Government bodies should stop viewing the pilgrimage to Santiago as a tourist product or leisure experience. It is imperative that management and promotion of the Camino be removed from the Tourism department and returned to the oversight of Culture and Heritage.
We view The Way in its original medieval incarnation, as a great long-haul odyssey. The current dynamic strips away the meaning of the Camino for the sake of pecuniary interests and inevitably leads to a complete break with tradition. Those of us who work on and for the Camino – Amigos Associations, albergues, volunteers, government agents, and the Compostela cathedral itself -- are directly responsible for preventing this process of consumption. Our position is not just a romantic notion, much less a reactionary stand. It is made from deep respect for an ancient tradition that some shortsighted people are distorting for the sake of economic opportunism. If we do not stand up, they will soon destroy the magic that is the Camino de Santiago.
Anton Pombo, International Brotherhood of Camino de Santiago.
Sarria, March 12, 2016
The difficulty with this analysis, and it occurs throughout this thread, is that we are all tourists, inasmuch as we are traveling for recreation, pleasure or culture, or visiting a number of places for our objects of interest (paraphrased from the OED). Or one could use the UNWTO definitions, but they have similar effect.then a signicant [sic] drop in what are really tourists will happen and The Way will resume its true meaning.
k. Walking for days is humbling, it puts one in a different place and gives one different eyes. --- My older sister tells me she would like to walk the Camino-- she has her eyes on a tour that will carry her pack, that will reserve a bed, that will cook her food, will give her a lift if her feet or knees hurt. She asked me if I would join her, and I think "No, I can't." I
The difficulty with this analysis, and it occurs throughout this thread, is that we are all tourists, inasmuch as we are traveling for recreation, pleasure or culture, or visiting a number of places for our objects of interest (paraphrased from the OED). Or one could use the UNWTO definitions, but they have similar effect.
The debate amounts to creating a distinction between different classes of tourist - walkers, riders of various forms, and vehicle passengers, all of whom might or might not be pilgrims.
So positioning the debate about reducing the numbers of a particular class of tourist is pure elitism, nothing more complicated. It appears to me that if there is a real case to be made for this, it needs to be founded on something other than discriminatory behaviour, and in the couple of times this has been discussed in my time here, FICS have not been able to do that. Until they do, I think they are bound to fail.
Really, I think this quote is telling:I can't see that the FICS proposal makes any attempt to distinguish the motives of people walking. It merely wants the 100km rule changed to 300km.
This distortion has contributed to the ongoing transformation of the road into a tourist product. Tour operators and travel agencies offer the credential and Compostela as marketing tools, souvenirs that reward tourists and trekkers who walk four or five days of the road without any idea of pilgrimage, using and monopolizing the network of low-cost hostels intended for pilgrims.
It is clearly a purpose of the proposal to reduce the numbers of what are referred to as tourists. Given we are all tourists, by both common English usage and the UNWTO definitions, it is essentially saying something about a class of tourists that are unattractive to FICS. As it stands, I see that as elitist and discriminatory.Yes, @dougfitz you are right in that it is part of this perso's reasoning, but the actual proposal does not suggest any changes except for the distance.
I chose the English to "wet my feet", the Portuguese to make sure I liked "wet Feet". I wanted to save the entire French way if I liked walking the caminos.Dropping the certificate and having your stamped passport works for me and good idea . The SARRIA starting point for me was more about trying out the Camino , time , and health after coming from USA and not about any certificate . Having visited all our national parks , which are truly awesome , the "parks for the people " are being restricted which hopefully will not be the case for any part of the Camino .
Moving to SPAIN next winter and not for any certificate !
@Richard A Stead, if what you claim to be the problem is people who aren't walkers or riders of bikes and horses etc, and the current mechanisms are not working to your satisfaction, what other mechanism would you propose. Running the rhetoric around a distinction that isn't real - tourists vs pilgrims - just makes FICS appear elitist to me.Sorry I do not agree. This is a pilgrimage and you keep referring to tourists. The major problem is the attraction to many people of getting a certificate for fairly minimal effort and in many cases no effort as luggage and bookings are taken care of. If this was not the case far fewer people would do it and instead of after 700 ks finding all of the accomodation (sic) booked pilgrims would be able to find somewhere to sleep. For many this is something to tick off or put on their CV and the true spirit of The Camino is lost.
The 300-kilometer shift will ease the antagonism that rises up between long-distance pilgrims and those on a “short haul.” Attempts to turn the last stages of the Way into a pure tourist “Disneyland” will be blunted.
You don't have to walk to go on a pilgrimage. You only have to walk to get a Compostella. You can get on an aeroplane and go direct to Santiago, pray at the tomb of the Saint. That makes you a Pilgrim.
Just like going to any other pilgrimage site. The walking is optional.
It doesn't have to involve effort or be painful.
I will start the Portuguese Route in September starting from Lisbon. What are the odds of us coming across each other in Santiago!I am doing my first Camino in September ,I think the change to 300 km is a good idea ,I wanted to do the route from Zamora but decided the distances between accomodation was more than I want to walk in a day ,so am doing the France's .if it means than more people are on these alternative routes it must be a win win situation ,more income for those other towns and hopefully more auberges to stay in.
I said this earlier, and on reflection, it may well be that to implement any changes, there will need to be new rules that discriminate against a certain class of people. Currently, the rules discriminate between those who walk 100km and those who don't. That is a reasonable factual observation, although there are possible abuses of the evidentiary requirements. Using albergues is also subject to a similar test, with the same potential for abuse. It is not a perfect system, but then I doubt any rules based system would be, and any system that relies on detecting the motivation of the individual is just nonsense. Is there another approach? There must be, but let's not make its design motivation be to deter those we somehow deem unworthy based on our assessments of their intentions.I see that as elitist and discriminatory
The difficulty with this analysis, and it occurs throughout this thread, is that we are all tourists, inasmuch as we are traveling for recreation, pleasure or culture, or visiting a number of places for our objects of interest (paraphrased from the OED). Or one could use the UNWTO definitions, but they have similar effect.
The debate amounts to creating a distinction between different classes of tourist - walkers, riders of various forms, and vehicle passengers, all of whom might or might not be pilgrims.
So positioning the debate about reducing the numbers of a particular class of tourist is pure elitism, nothing more complicated. It appears to me that if there is a real case to be made for this, it needs to be founded on something other than discriminatory behaviour, and in the couple of times this has been discussed in my time here, FICS have not been able to do that. Until they do, I think they are bound to fail.
Are you suggesting that you had no interest in visiting St James' tomb, the Cathedral, Santiago or any of the major cultural and religious sites along the way. Even if you don't think of your journey as being to see the cultural phenomena of the Camino de Santiago, you appear to be ignoring that part of the meaning that includesBut the thing is, no matter what the OED might state, I was not a tourist (traveling for recreation, pleasure or culture) when I walked the Camino.
or visiting a number of places for our objects of interest.
Are you suggesting that you had no interest in visiting St James' tomb, the Cathedral, Santiago or any of the major cultural and religious sites along the way. Even if you don't think of your journey as being to see the cultural phenomena of the Camino de Santiago, you appear to be ignoring that part of the meaning that includes
The answer to your question dougfitz is that I did not travel for sightseeing purposes, especially the visiting of 'religious sites' for non-religious purposes. I never entered a church without lighting a candle and leaving a prayer.
Sorry I do not agree. This is a pilgrimage and you keep referring to tourists. The major problem is the attraction to many people of getting a certificate for fairly minimal effort and in many cases no effort as luggage and bookings are taken care of. If this was not the case far fewer people would do it and instead of after 700 ks finding all of the accomodation booked pilgrims would be able to find somewhere to sleep. For many this is something to tick off or put on their CV and the true spirit of The Camino is lost.
Well, if I google the definition I see "with firm belief" "with assurance or confidence" ... If I gogle further Oxford dictionary says "used to show you are almost certain of what you are saying and want other people to agree with you". Also "used with a negative to show that something surprises you and you do not want to believe it"
Surely I know how to use the word. Thank you.
Thank you.This is a difficult thread to keep a grip on because it connects to so many recurring themes on the forum. You are right dougfitz to draw attention to the need to make clear the parameters of the debate but I disagree with about elitism. While I appreciate the usefulness of definitions, in a later post you quite rightly say that it is not in your gift - and I assume anyone else's - to know someone else's motivation (if I have misrepresented your actual words or gist or your argument, please excuse me, they are not in front of me as I write because I don't know how to paste two quotes into one post). But the thing is, no matter what the OED might state, I was not a tourist (traveling for recreation, pleasure or culture) when I walked the Camino. Last year I walked out of sadness because of the loss of my partner, but also to give thanks for the blessings of that loving relationship. It was prayers and tears that characterised the early stages of my walking and an unwillingness on my part to forge friendships. No doubt next time I walk, the experience will be different, if only because the grief will not be so raw, but those long stretches of walking in solitude were for me the beginning of an emotional and spiritual healing - and yes it is still possible to walk the CF for long stretches with no-one in front or behind you. I live in a beautiful part of the world with ample opportunity for walking, but the Camino makes physical, emotional and (for me), spiritual demands unlike any other route. The knowledge that the Camino has had a long historical and religious meaning for thousands of people may, I acknowledge, have little significance for many folk - that is an observation not a judgement btw - but for me it meant a great deal. and made the Way something more than a very long walk. I am not elitist but neither am I a fundamentalist relativist either. It matters to me that goodwill might be eroded by economic opportunism and that those who choose to walk for religious/spiritual reasons may find it increasingly difficult to access that dimension of their Camino because there is not as much money to be made from them as there is from untrammelled tourism and my fear is that the former's needs will be trivialised or silenced at the shrine of laissez-faire.
Arn, I welcomed the overall content of your post, but surely Christ's reaction to the money-changers in the Temple might be the more apt example here, he was most definitely not a supporter of laissez-faire attitudes in matters religious.
Thank you PEI Heather. Thing is, where would this idea come from based on my use of the word "surely"? Because the original quote in the movie does not refer to "surely" but inconcivable. It may have been a witty way on his part to criticise my use of theword, the problem is that the way I use it is correct and does mean what I think it means.I think Jozero was pulling your leg, Anemone. He was quoting from a much loved movie, The Princess Bride (pretty well word for word), and I will think (hope) was not doing so to antagonize you.
Thank you PEI Heather. Thing is, where would this idea come from based on my use of the word "surely"? Because the original quote in the movie does not refer to "surely" but inconcivable. It may have been a witty way on his part to criticise my use of theword, the problem is that the way I use it is correct and does mean what I think it means.
Kathar1na you have hit an "historical" nail on the head as to the why the Way was and IS important today.Concerning the entry for Compostela in the Xacopedia (in Spanish) mentioned earlier: the first photo on the top of the entry are not yet filled in compostelas from the 1650s. The text is fundamentally different from today's text, it confirms that the recipient, as a pilgrim, went to confession, received absolution and took communion, which was of course in those days an absolute necessity for it to be a pilgrimage.
I've also read the resolutions dated 12th and 13th of March.
My reaction to the issues: A camel is a horse designed by committee.
Dear friends, the Fraternidad Internacional del Camino de Santiago, an activist group comprised of historians, sociologists, hospitaleros, and camino busybodies, last weekend met in Sarria to debate the latest issues and decide how to solve some problems.
Most of you know that one of our more controversial proposals is petitioning the cathedral to extend the 100 km. required to earn a Compostela certificate to 300 kilometers. Everyone asks why.
So I translated (pretty awkwardly in places, I know!) the explanatory document, a paper written by Anton Pombo, a camino historian who has lived much of the current renaissance on the trail -- he was one of the first to paint yellow arrows to Finesterre. This document was presented to the cathedral dean and cabildo last week. It has NOT been approved or put into effect!
PROPOSAL TO EXPAND THE MINIMUM DISTANCE REQUIRED FOR AWARDING OF THE COMPOSTELA to 300 KILOMETERS
THE GENESIS OF THE ROAD
Since its inception, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was never a short-term undertaking. It was not a local or regional shrine that gradually gained fame through popular acclaim and miracles. On the contrary, it sprang into being with fully-formed international appeal: It led to the officially recognized apostolic tomb of Santiago the Greater. It managed to bring together not only Christian rites and symbols, but incorporated practices of past cults as well, as evidenced by legends of the translation of James’ body and the possible Celtic pilgrimage to Finisterre.
Alfonso II the Chaste, King of Asturias and Galicia, made the first political pilgrimage to Santiago after the rediscovery or "inventio" of the tomb between AD 820 and 830. The first documented pilgrims appeared in the 10th century from beyond the Pyrenees, devotees from from Germany and France, but we do not know their itinerary.
By the 11th century the “French route” along the Meseta was already established as a long-distance roadway to and from Europe, equipped with a network of pilgrim shelters. The pilgrimage to Santiago took its place alongside Jerusalem and Rome as one of the three great classic treks of Christianity. Santiago stood at the western end of the known world, following the direction the sun in the day and the Milky Way in the night. For pure symbolic value, Santiago surpassed Jerusalem and Rome. The Jacobean legend spread through Europe in the tales of Compostela in the times of Bishop Gelmirez, and above all, in the Codex Calixtinus. The universal dimension of this pilgrimage shines through medieval literature, inspiring works like the Historia Caroli Magni et Rotholandi or “Pseudo Turpin.” This book recounts the exploits of King Charlemagne, whose army supposedly opened the Camino pathway, guided by a sweep of stars all the way to Compostela and the ocean beyond.
The same tone was maintained into the late Middle Ages, despite the Reformation. The Counter-Reformation infused the pilgrimage with a focus on Catholic dogma. Walking to Santiago became a visible, living profession of religious faith. Pilgrims trickled in from all over the world. Centuries passed, but the Way of Santiago never lost its international character.
DECLINE AND REBIRTH OF THE PILGRIMAGE
But over time, the triumph of Liberal thought and the overwhelming idea of progress consigned the ancient pilgrimage path to a relic, something anachronistic and meaningless, reserved for vagrants and beggars. By the 19th century, the Compostela pilgrimage was practically extinct.
Other European Christian shrines and pilgrimages enjoyed a limited success, so archbishops Payá y Rico and Martin Herrera sought to stir up a new public religious devotion to St. James. The relics of the apostle were re-discovered after 300 years, so the local authorities tried to revitalize the pilgrimage with their meager means, using local processions and day-trips to Santiago as well as other holy sites, to at least keep the flame burning.
These local “romerias” became popular throughout Spain, upholding regional pride but thwarting the idea of traditional pilgrimage on foot. Twentieth-century “National Catholicism” manipulated the Compostela pilgrimage, focusing the faithful on arriving at the goal. The Way itself was downplayed, and the old walking routes were practically forgotten.
When the European Postwar intellectual and social crisis struck in the 1950s, it was foreigners, not Spaniards, who rediscovered the value of the pilgrimage. The Paris Society of Friends of the Camino was founded in 1950, with the Marquis Rene de La Coste-Messelière, among those who took the first timid steps.
The first Spanish association formed in Estella in the 1960s with the involvement of Paco Beruete and Eusebio Goicoechea, and registered itself in 1973. They delved into the study of the Jacobean pilgrimage as part of the Medieval Weeks festival in Estella, with their eyes always trained on the 11th and 12th-century "golden age" they hoped may someday revive.
This same historicist and romantic spirit, with the Codex Calixtinus as the main reference, is what inspired Elijah Valiña Sampedro, a man misunderstood in his time, to conceive the idea of revitalizing the foot pilgrimage on the French Way. Not beginning from Sarria, his own birthplace, nor from the Galician frontier, despite his being the pastor of St. Mary of O Cebreiro, Don Elias took the long view. He traced the most direct route to Compostela, gradually joining section to other sections. He understood from the beginning the Way in its original sense, as a geographic whole. Thus, with the collaboration of different people all along the route, he went to work to recover and mark with yellow arrows the better-known and documented French Way, from the Pyrenees to Compostela. He cooperated closely with the French, who did the same with France’s great historic routes, described in the famous guide book V of Calixtino: Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy and Arles.
Thus was reborn the Camino de Santiago in the 70s and 80s of the last century, with the utmost respect for history and tradition. The French Way was recovered first, and the remaining historical itineraries soon followed. It was an exemplary process, performed selflessly from the bottom up with the support and generosity of associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago, which multiplied since the 80s. The Amigos groups’ first major achievement was the International Congress of Associations of Jaca (1987), chaired by Elias Valiña as Commissioner of the Way. A new credential was established, drawn from a prototype from Estella, to serve as a safe-conduct to contemporary pilgrims, allowing the use of pilgrim accommodations. No minimum distance was established to claim a Compostela at the Cathedral.
FROM THE XACOBEO TO NOW
The year 1993 was a Holy Year, and pilgrims poured into the shrine city. The regional government of Galicia rolled out "Xacobeo," a secular, promotional program that claimed to “parallel” the religious celebration while developing advertising campaigns and marketing strategies. The Xacobeo slogan, "All the Way," summed-up its fundamental objective: to transform the Camino de Santiago into a great cultural and tourist brand for Galicia, and squeeze the maximum benefit from a tourist phenomenon ripe with possibilities for community development. It was at this point that the still-incipient mileage requirement of the Compostela was set at 100 km.
The "All the Way" and 100 km idea, despite Galicia’s good-faith construction of a public network of free shelters, immediately created tensions with the plan developed by Valiña and the worldwide Jacobean associations. The minimum distance, which fit perfectly into the plans of the Xunta de Galicia to “begin and end the Camino in Galicia,” ended up creating a distorted image of what and where the Camino de Santiago is, a distortion that appears now to be unstoppable, and threatens to undermine and trivialize the traditional sense of the Compostela pilgrimage. For many, the pilgrimage is understood only as a four- or five-day stroll through Galicia – a reductionist view antagonistic to the historical sense of the great European pilgrimage tradition.
This distortion has contributed to the ongoing transformation of the road into a tourist product. Tour operators and travel agencies offer the credential and Compostela as marketing tools, souvenirs that reward tourists and trekkers who walk four or five days of the road without any idea of pilgrimage, using and monopolizing the network of low-cost hostels intended for pilgrims. The consequence of this abuse is the same seen at by many sites of significant cultural heritage: the progressive conversion of the monument or site to a “decaffeinated” product of mass tourism. It is a theme park stripped of “boring” interpretive information from historians or literary scholars, suitable for the rapid entertainment of the new, illiterate traveler unable to see any value in an experience that is not immediately recognizable and familiar. The consumer cannot enjoy an experience that requires preparation, training, and time, so the marketers provide him with a cheap and easy “Camino Lite” experience. Likewise, even as the Camino is commodified, its precious, intangible heritage of interpersonal generosity and simplicity is lost. Without this “pilgrim spirit,” the Camino’s monumental itinerary becomes a mere archaeological stage-set.
In recent years, the number of pilgrims from Sarria, Tui, Lugo, Ourense, Ferrol and other places just beyond the 100 km required to obtain the Compostela, has grown steadily, according to data provided by the Pilgrimage Office of the Cathedral of Santiago. The true number of “short haul” pilgrims is, according to studies prepared by the Observatory of the Camino de Santiago USC, much higher. More than 260,000 pilgrims registered in 2015, but at least as many again did not register at the cathedral office – they had been on the road without reaching the goal (they ran out of time) or they did not collect the Compostela due to lack of interest or knowledge. Many of these unregistered "pilgrims" respond the low-cost tourist or hiker profile.
According to figures for 2015, of the 262,516 pilgrims who collected the Compostela, 90.19% arrived on foot. More than a quarter left from Sarria (25.68%, more than double the number who left from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, a traditional starting point 500 km. away in France). Another 5.25% walked from Tui; 3.94% came from O Cebreiro (151 km); Ferrol 3.31%; 2.17% from Valenca do Minho; 1.17% from Lugo; Ourense 1.09%; 0.84% to 0.57% from Triacastela and Samos, to name the next major starting points. Add up all these “short haul” pilgrims, and you see they are 44.02%, almost half of the total. Their numbers rise each year. If we add to this figure those arriving from points far less than 300 km from Santiago de Compostela the number is well over 50% of registered pilgrims.
We are faced with a choice. This “short-trip pilgrim” dynamic is only slowed by foreign pilgrims, who naturally fit better into the traditional role of the long-haul pilgrimage. We can keep silent and give up the Camino to the short-term interests of politicians, developers and agencies seeking only immediate benefit or profits. Or we can resist, try to change the trend, redirect the Camino to its role as an adventure that has little to do with tourism. We can reclaim the long-distance Camino and the values that make it unique: effort, transcendence, searching, reflection, encounters with others, solidarity, ecumenism or spirituality, all of them oriented toward a distant, shared goal.
Some object, noting that long ago, every pilgrim started from his own home, no matter how near or far it was from Santiago. Documentation and history say that Santiago de Compostela was never a place of worship for the Galicians, who had their own shrines and pilgrimages. Outside the pilgrimage, Santiago never had a great relevance for Spaniards, let alone the majority of foreign pilgrims.
The FICS proposal to amend of the Compostela requirements by the Council of the Church of Santiago is not intended to solve at a stroke the problems of the Camino. Requiring a walk of 300 kilometers will not ease the overcrowding on the last sections, or stop the clash between two opposite ways of understanding the pilgrimage. It aims at the symbolic level, and hopes to establish a new understanding of the Way which dovetails with the traditions of the preceding eleven centuries .
1. We hope first to re-establish to dignity of the Compostela, which has lately become an increasingly devalued certificate granted without requirements or agreements attached. It is handed out as a prize or a souvenir at the end of a Camino de Santiago package tour, without a flicker of its religious or spiritual connotation.
2. The contemporary revival of the Camino has made every effort to restore and protect historic pilgrimage routes. The Camino trail is hailed for its cultural interest, and its heritage value is listed by UNESCO. The same care should be exercised should be taken to preserve the practices of the pilgrims on the Santiago trail – the “pilgrim spirit” that forms the Camino’s intangible heritage. Thousands of pilgrims still experience the unity and life-changing power of the trail in its utter simplicity. Their needs cannot be sacrificed to “inevitable concessions to modernity.”
3. Many Gallegos who profit from the Camino see the pilgrimage as a passing phenomenon. They take a short-sighted view of history, and disregard the efforts and claims of neighboring communities of Asturias and Castilla y Leon, and Portugal, all of which have striven to document, retrieve, waymark and revitalize their historic itineraries of the reborn pilgrimage. Despite what Gallego tourist authorities say, the Camino de Santiago does not begin at the Galician border. The road should be treated as a whole, not segmented into independent and disjointed portions, and even less monopolized by the end-point. Even more oddly, ancient camino routes are being marketed as a paths without a goal – a phenomenon apparent in France, or on tributary routes that converge with larger axis, (ie, the Aragonés Camino, Camino del Baztán, San Adrian Tunnel, etc.), sold as "Jacobean routes."
4. This proposed distance is fixed at about three hundred kilometers. This figure is not a random whim – it is drawn from the very first recorded pilgrimage route to Compostela, now known as Camino Primitivo. This is the route taken by the courtiers of Oviedo to the honor the relics of the “Locus Sancti Iacobi,” a distance of 319 km.
Likewise, the 300 km. distance also fits the subsequent 10th century shift of the main pilgrimage axis to the French Way. King Garcia moved his court from Oviedo to Leon, a move confirmed by Ordoño II. Leon is 311 kilometers from Santiago.
Other places linked to the pilgrimage also fit within the scope of this distance: Aviles (320 km), the main medieval port of Asturias, where seaborne pilgrims landed; Zamora (377 km) in the Via de la Plata; Porto (280 km) in the Central Portuguese Way; or the episcopal city of Lamego (290 km) on the Portuguese Way of the Interior.
5. The basis of our proposal is historical: The original geographic triangle of Aviles, Oviedo, Leon. There should therefore not be an arbitrary numerical figure, but a reasonable level of average distance for the traditional pilgrimage on foot, by bicycle or on horseback, in the vicinity of 300 km. This puts the spotlight on the different Jacobean long-distance routes. It meets the needs of contemporary pilgrims for good transportation links and population centers to launch them on their way.
6. The change is not intended to exclude pilgrims whose limited schedules prevent them from walking more than 100 km, an objection that always is posited against increasing the required mileage. The road can be done in stages, at different time periods, or very slowly, all of which are perfectly valid ways to obtain the Compostela.
7. Attempts to divert pilgrims from the overcrowded French Way and Portuguese Route have been unsuccessful, and there are still overcrowding problems on the final, Galician stages, especially from Tui and Sarria onward to Compostela. Municipalities along these roads face serious problems at times of peak pilgrim traffic.
8. The Galician administration’s appropriation of the Camino de Santiago and marketing efforts that describe only the last (Galician) 100 km, have left large areas of Galician Camino “high and dry:” Samos, Triacastela or O Cebreiro, on the French Way; Castroverde, Baleira and A Fonsagrada on the Primitivo; Ribadeo, Lourenzá, Mondoñedo, Abadín and Vilalba on the Northern Way; The whole province of Ourense east of the capital, Allariz, Xinzo, Verin, A Gudina, on the Sanabres Route. The citizens of these camino communities provide the same services to pilgrims, but are unfairly cut from the pilgrimage map by a regional administration so sharply focused on the 100-kilometer radius.
9. The 300-kilometer shift will ease the antagonism that rises up between long-distance pilgrims and those on a “short haul.” Attempts to turn the last stages of the Way into a pure tourist “Disneyland” will be blunted.
10. An exception must be made for the English Way, a route with historical documentation reaching back to the Late Middle Ages. Pilgrims came by sea to Ferrol (120 km) and A Coruña (75 km), now one of the most marginalized of all itineraries. Finally, another logical exception must be granted to disabled pilgrims, for whom the 100 km limit should continue.
The request to extend the 300 km the minimum for obtaining Compostela is part of a more ambitious global proposal. FICS proposes a new management model for public shelters, with preference given to long-haul pilgrims, and eliminating abuses by commercial interests who profit from the albergue network. Government bodies should stop viewing the pilgrimage to Santiago as a tourist product or leisure experience. It is imperative that management and promotion of the Camino be removed from the Tourism department and returned to the oversight of Culture and Heritage.
We view The Way in its original medieval incarnation, as a great long-haul odyssey. The current dynamic strips away the meaning of the Camino for the sake of pecuniary interests and inevitably leads to a complete break with tradition. Those of us who work on and for the Camino – Amigos Associations, albergues, volunteers, government agents, and the Compostela cathedral itself -- are directly responsible for preventing this process of consumption. Our position is not just a romantic notion, much less a reactionary stand. It is made from deep respect for an ancient tradition that some shortsighted people are distorting for the sake of economic opportunism. If we do not stand up, they will soon destroy the magic that is the Camino de Santiago.
Anton Pombo, International Brotherhood of Camino de Santiago.
Sarria, March 12, 2016
In that case why keep on about changing the distance and not just leave well alone! Those who want to walk more can, those who don't have no need of being told to walk further etc.......IMHO, A Camino well-walked with compassion for fellows on the trail, finished-up at the Cathedral with thankfulness, cuts through all the rigmarole and rules. A pilgrimage is between you and God. The rest is noise.
Good idea in theory, so many people have reasons for only completing 100km's, often it has to do with poor health, or a lack of time. I have heard some heart warming stories about people completing the Camino before passing on. So any decision, on giving out recognition for those who walk under 300 km's needs to be taken with great sensitivity and understanding. In my opinion, it will not affect how I feel or how motivated I am when I walk. It's irrelevant if the person walking next to me has travelled 10km's or 10000km's. PatrickDear friends, the Fraternidad Internacional del Camino de Santiago, an activist group comprised of historians, sociologists, hospitaleros, and camino busybodies, last weekend met in Sarria to debate the latest issues and decide how to solve some problems.
Most of you know that one of our more controversial proposals is petitioning the cathedral to extend the 100 km. required to earn a Compostela certificate to 300 kilometers. Everyone asks why.
So I translated (pretty awkwardly in places, I know!) the explanatory document, a paper written by Anton Pombo, a camino historian who has lived much of the current renaissance on the trail -- he was one of the first to paint yellow arrows to Finesterre. This document was presented to the cathedral dean and cabildo last week. It has NOT been approved or put into effect!
PROPOSAL TO EXPAND THE MINIMUM DISTANCE REQUIRED FOR AWARDING OF THE COMPOSTELA to 300 KILOMETERS
THE GENESIS OF THE ROAD
Since its inception, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela was never a short-term undertaking. It was not a local or regional shrine that gradually gained fame through popular acclaim and miracles. On the contrary, it sprang into being with fully-formed international appeal: It led to the officially recognized apostolic tomb of Santiago the Greater. It managed to bring together not only Christian rites and symbols, but incorporated practices of past cults as well, as evidenced by legends of the translation of James’ body and the possible Celtic pilgrimage to Finisterre.
Alfonso II the Chaste, King of Asturias and Galicia, made the first political pilgrimage to Santiago after the rediscovery or "inventio" of the tomb between AD 820 and 830. The first documented pilgrims appeared in the 10th century from beyond the Pyrenees, devotees from from Germany and France, but we do not know their itinerary.
By the 11th century the “French route” along the Meseta was already established as a long-distance roadway to and from Europe, equipped with a network of pilgrim shelters. The pilgrimage to Santiago took its place alongside Jerusalem and Rome as one of the three great classic treks of Christianity. Santiago stood at the western end of the known world, following the direction the sun in the day and the Milky Way in the night. For pure symbolic value, Santiago surpassed Jerusalem and Rome. The Jacobean legend spread through Europe in the tales of Compostela in the times of Bishop Gelmirez, and above all, in the Codex Calixtinus. The universal dimension of this pilgrimage shines through medieval literature, inspiring works like the Historia Caroli Magni et Rotholandi or “Pseudo Turpin.” This book recounts the exploits of King Charlemagne, whose army supposedly opened the Camino pathway, guided by a sweep of stars all the way to Compostela and the ocean beyond.
The same tone was maintained into the late Middle Ages, despite the Reformation. The Counter-Reformation infused the pilgrimage with a focus on Catholic dogma. Walking to Santiago became a visible, living profession of religious faith. Pilgrims trickled in from all over the world. Centuries passed, but the Way of Santiago never lost its international character.
DECLINE AND REBIRTH OF THE PILGRIMAGE
But over time, the triumph of Liberal thought and the overwhelming idea of progress consigned the ancient pilgrimage path to a relic, something anachronistic and meaningless, reserved for vagrants and beggars. By the 19th century, the Compostela pilgrimage was practically extinct.
Other European Christian shrines and pilgrimages enjoyed a limited success, so archbishops Payá y Rico and Martin Herrera sought to stir up a new public religious devotion to St. James. The relics of the apostle were re-discovered after 300 years, so the local authorities tried to revitalize the pilgrimage with their meager means, using local processions and day-trips to Santiago as well as other holy sites, to at least keep the flame burning.
These local “romerias” became popular throughout Spain, upholding regional pride but thwarting the idea of traditional pilgrimage on foot. Twentieth-century “National Catholicism” manipulated the Compostela pilgrimage, focusing the faithful on arriving at the goal. The Way itself was downplayed, and the old walking routes were practically forgotten.
When the European Postwar intellectual and social crisis struck in the 1950s, it was foreigners, not Spaniards, who rediscovered the value of the pilgrimage. The Paris Society of Friends of the Camino was founded in 1950, with the Marquis Rene de La Coste-Messelière, among those who took the first timid steps.
The first Spanish association formed in Estella in the 1960s with the involvement of Paco Beruete and Eusebio Goicoechea, and registered itself in 1973. They delved into the study of the Jacobean pilgrimage as part of the Medieval Weeks festival in Estella, with their eyes always trained on the 11th and 12th-century "golden age" they hoped may someday revive.
This same historicist and romantic spirit, with the Codex Calixtinus as the main reference, is what inspired Elijah Valiña Sampedro, a man misunderstood in his time, to conceive the idea of revitalizing the foot pilgrimage on the French Way. Not beginning from Sarria, his own birthplace, nor from the Galician frontier, despite his being the pastor of St. Mary of O Cebreiro, Don Elias took the long view. He traced the most direct route to Compostela, gradually joining section to other sections. He understood from the beginning the Way in its original sense, as a geographic whole. Thus, with the collaboration of different people all along the route, he went to work to recover and mark with yellow arrows the better-known and documented French Way, from the Pyrenees to Compostela. He cooperated closely with the French, who did the same with France’s great historic routes, described in the famous guide book V of Calixtino: Tours, Vézelay, Le Puy and Arles.
Thus was reborn the Camino de Santiago in the 70s and 80s of the last century, with the utmost respect for history and tradition. The French Way was recovered first, and the remaining historical itineraries soon followed. It was an exemplary process, performed selflessly from the bottom up with the support and generosity of associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago, which multiplied since the 80s. The Amigos groups’ first major achievement was the International Congress of Associations of Jaca (1987), chaired by Elias Valiña as Commissioner of the Way. A new credential was established, drawn from a prototype from Estella, to serve as a safe-conduct to contemporary pilgrims, allowing the use of pilgrim accommodations. No minimum distance was established to claim a Compostela at the Cathedral.
FROM THE XACOBEO TO NOW
The year 1993 was a Holy Year, and pilgrims poured into the shrine city. The regional government of Galicia rolled out "Xacobeo," a secular, promotional program that claimed to “parallel” the religious celebration while developing advertising campaigns and marketing strategies. The Xacobeo slogan, "All the Way," summed-up its fundamental objective: to transform the Camino de Santiago into a great cultural and tourist brand for Galicia, and squeeze the maximum benefit from a tourist phenomenon ripe with possibilities for community development. It was at this point that the still-incipient mileage requirement of the Compostela was set at 100 km.
The "All the Way" and 100 km idea, despite Galicia’s good-faith construction of a public network of free shelters, immediately created tensions with the plan developed by Valiña and the worldwide Jacobean associations. The minimum distance, which fit perfectly into the plans of the Xunta de Galicia to “begin and end the Camino in Galicia,” ended up creating a distorted image of what and where the Camino de Santiago is, a distortion that appears now to be unstoppable, and threatens to undermine and trivialize the traditional sense of the Compostela pilgrimage. For many, the pilgrimage is understood only as a four- or five-day stroll through Galicia – a reductionist view antagonistic to the historical sense of the great European pilgrimage tradition.
This distortion has contributed to the ongoing transformation of the road into a tourist product. Tour operators and travel agencies offer the credential and Compostela as marketing tools, souvenirs that reward tourists and trekkers who walk four or five days of the road without any idea of pilgrimage, using and monopolizing the network of low-cost hostels intended for pilgrims. The consequence of this abuse is the same seen at by many sites of significant cultural heritage: the progressive conversion of the monument or site to a “decaffeinated” product of mass tourism. It is a theme park stripped of “boring” interpretive information from historians or literary scholars, suitable for the rapid entertainment of the new, illiterate traveler unable to see any value in an experience that is not immediately recognizable and familiar. The consumer cannot enjoy an experience that requires preparation, training, and time, so the marketers provide him with a cheap and easy “Camino Lite” experience. Likewise, even as the Camino is commodified, its precious, intangible heritage of interpersonal generosity and simplicity is lost. Without this “pilgrim spirit,” the Camino’s monumental itinerary becomes a mere archaeological stage-set.
In recent years, the number of pilgrims from Sarria, Tui, Lugo, Ourense, Ferrol and other places just beyond the 100 km required to obtain the Compostela, has grown steadily, according to data provided by the Pilgrimage Office of the Cathedral of Santiago. The true number of “short haul” pilgrims is, according to studies prepared by the Observatory of the Camino de Santiago USC, much higher. More than 260,000 pilgrims registered in 2015, but at least as many again did not register at the cathedral office – they had been on the road without reaching the goal (they ran out of time) or they did not collect the Compostela due to lack of interest or knowledge. Many of these unregistered "pilgrims" respond the low-cost tourist or hiker profile.
According to figures for 2015, of the 262,516 pilgrims who collected the Compostela, 90.19% arrived on foot. More than a quarter left from Sarria (25.68%, more than double the number who left from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, a traditional starting point 500 km. away in France). Another 5.25% walked from Tui; 3.94% came from O Cebreiro (151 km); Ferrol 3.31%; 2.17% from Valenca do Minho; 1.17% from Lugo; Ourense 1.09%; 0.84% to 0.57% from Triacastela and Samos, to name the next major starting points. Add up all these “short haul” pilgrims, and you see they are 44.02%, almost half of the total. Their numbers rise each year. If we add to this figure those arriving from points far less than 300 km from Santiago de Compostela the number is well over 50% of registered pilgrims.
We are faced with a choice. This “short-trip pilgrim” dynamic is only slowed by foreign pilgrims, who naturally fit better into the traditional role of the long-haul pilgrimage. We can keep silent and give up the Camino to the short-term interests of politicians, developers and agencies seeking only immediate benefit or profits. Or we can resist, try to change the trend, redirect the Camino to its role as an adventure that has little to do with tourism. We can reclaim the long-distance Camino and the values that make it unique: effort, transcendence, searching, reflection, encounters with others, solidarity, ecumenism or spirituality, all of them oriented toward a distant, shared goal.
Some object, noting that long ago, every pilgrim started from his own home, no matter how near or far it was from Santiago. Documentation and history say that Santiago de Compostela was never a place of worship for the Galicians, who had their own shrines and pilgrimages. Outside the pilgrimage, Santiago never had a great relevance for Spaniards, let alone the majority of foreign pilgrims.
The FICS proposal to amend of the Compostela requirements by the Council of the Church of Santiago is not intended to solve at a stroke the problems of the Camino. Requiring a walk of 300 kilometers will not ease the overcrowding on the last sections, or stop the clash between two opposite ways of understanding the pilgrimage. It aims at the symbolic level, and hopes to establish a new understanding of the Way which dovetails with the traditions of the preceding eleven centuries .
1. We hope first to re-establish to dignity of the Compostela, which has lately become an increasingly devalued certificate granted without requirements or agreements attached. It is handed out as a prize or a souvenir at the end of a Camino de Santiago package tour, without a flicker of its religious or spiritual connotation.
2. The contemporary revival of the Camino has made every effort to restore and protect historic pilgrimage routes. The Camino trail is hailed for its cultural interest, and its heritage value is listed by UNESCO. The same care should be exercised should be taken to preserve the practices of the pilgrims on the Santiago trail – the “pilgrim spirit” that forms the Camino’s intangible heritage. Thousands of pilgrims still experience the unity and life-changing power of the trail in its utter simplicity. Their needs cannot be sacrificed to “inevitable concessions to modernity.”
3. Many Gallegos who profit from the Camino see the pilgrimage as a passing phenomenon. They take a short-sighted view of history, and disregard the efforts and claims of neighboring communities of Asturias and Castilla y Leon, and Portugal, all of which have striven to document, retrieve, waymark and revitalize their historic itineraries of the reborn pilgrimage. Despite what Gallego tourist authorities say, the Camino de Santiago does not begin at the Galician border. The road should be treated as a whole, not segmented into independent and disjointed portions, and even less monopolized by the end-point. Even more oddly, ancient camino routes are being marketed as a paths without a goal – a phenomenon apparent in France, or on tributary routes that converge with larger axis, (ie, the Aragonés Camino, Camino del Baztán, San Adrian Tunnel, etc.), sold as "Jacobean routes."
4. This proposed distance is fixed at about three hundred kilometers. This figure is not a random whim – it is drawn from the very first recorded pilgrimage route to Compostela, now known as Camino Primitivo. This is the route taken by the courtiers of Oviedo to the honor the relics of the “Locus Sancti Iacobi,” a distance of 319 km.
Likewise, the 300 km. distance also fits the subsequent 10th century shift of the main pilgrimage axis to the French Way. King Garcia moved his court from Oviedo to Leon, a move confirmed by Ordoño II. Leon is 311 kilometers from Santiago.
Other places linked to the pilgrimage also fit within the scope of this distance: Aviles (320 km), the main medieval port of Asturias, where seaborne pilgrims landed; Zamora (377 km) in the Via de la Plata; Porto (280 km) in the Central Portuguese Way; or the episcopal city of Lamego (290 km) on the Portuguese Way of the Interior.
5. The basis of our proposal is historical: The original geographic triangle of Aviles, Oviedo, Leon. There should therefore not be an arbitrary numerical figure, but a reasonable level of average distance for the traditional pilgrimage on foot, by bicycle or on horseback, in the vicinity of 300 km. This puts the spotlight on the different Jacobean long-distance routes. It meets the needs of contemporary pilgrims for good transportation links and population centers to launch them on their way.
6. The change is not intended to exclude pilgrims whose limited schedules prevent them from walking more than 100 km, an objection that always is posited against increasing the required mileage. The road can be done in stages, at different time periods, or very slowly, all of which are perfectly valid ways to obtain the Compostela.
7. Attempts to divert pilgrims from the overcrowded French Way and Portuguese Route have been unsuccessful, and there are still overcrowding problems on the final, Galician stages, especially from Tui and Sarria onward to Compostela. Municipalities along these roads face serious problems at times of peak pilgrim traffic.
8. The Galician administration’s appropriation of the Camino de Santiago and marketing efforts that describe only the last (Galician) 100 km, have left large areas of Galician Camino “high and dry:” Samos, Triacastela or O Cebreiro, on the French Way; Castroverde, Baleira and A Fonsagrada on the Primitivo; Ribadeo, Lourenzá, Mondoñedo, Abadín and Vilalba on the Northern Way; The whole province of Ourense east of the capital, Allariz, Xinzo, Verin, A Gudina, on the Sanabres Route. The citizens of these camino communities provide the same services to pilgrims, but are unfairly cut from the pilgrimage map by a regional administration so sharply focused on the 100-kilometer radius.
9. The 300-kilometer shift will ease the antagonism that rises up between long-distance pilgrims and those on a “short haul.” Attempts to turn the last stages of the Way into a pure tourist “Disneyland” will be blunted.
10. An exception must be made for the English Way, a route with historical documentation reaching back to the Late Middle Ages. Pilgrims came by sea to Ferrol (120 km) and A Coruña (75 km), now one of the most marginalized of all itineraries. Finally, another logical exception must be granted to disabled pilgrims, for whom the 100 km limit should continue.
The request to extend the 300 km the minimum for obtaining Compostela is part of a more ambitious global proposal. FICS proposes a new management model for public shelters, with preference given to long-haul pilgrims, and eliminating abuses by commercial interests who profit from the albergue network. Government bodies should stop viewing the pilgrimage to Santiago as a tourist product or leisure experience. It is imperative that management and promotion of the Camino be removed from the Tourism department and returned to the oversight of Culture and Heritage.
We view The Way in its original medieval incarnation, as a great long-haul odyssey. The current dynamic strips away the meaning of the Camino for the sake of pecuniary interests and inevitably leads to a complete break with tradition. Those of us who work on and for the Camino – Amigos Associations, albergues, volunteers, government agents, and the Compostela cathedral itself -- are directly responsible for preventing this process of consumption. Our position is not just a romantic notion, much less a reactionary stand. It is made from deep respect for an ancient tradition that some shortsighted people are distorting for the sake of economic opportunism. If we do not stand up, they will soon destroy the magic that is the Camino de Santiago.
Anton Pombo, International Brotherhood of Camino de Santiago.
Sarria, March 12, 2016
Unless I am mistaken, the 100 km are stated explicitly in the current (2015 / 2016) version of the Compostela which contains the lines perfecto itinere sive pedibus sive equitando post postrema centum milia metrorum, birota vero post ducenta pietatis causa, devote visitasse.The 100 km. covered is implied, but not expressed.
No, sorry, it is the pilgrimage to Santiago and the Cathedral that is meant to be meaningful, the distance is not what matters most. As has already been said it is possible to walk a short pilgrimage with a pilgrim's attitude just as well as a longer one. Time taken can add to the whole, but some of us take 9 or 10 days to walk the distance others can cover in 5...partly because of speed and ability and partly because we are stopping at the various churches etc along the route in preparation for our arrival in Santiago itself.First important aspect about Camino is: it's not the destination that matters but the Journey !
The longer, more meaningful it becomes.
Having logged in to read a PM I will respond and then go again....
No, sorry, it is the pilgrimage to Santiago and the Cathedral that is meant to be meaningful, the distance is not what matters most. As has already been said it is possible to walk a short pilgrimage with a pilgrim's attitude just as well as a longer one. Time taken can add to the whole, but some of us take 9 or 10 days to walk the distance others can cover in 5...partly because of speed and ability and partly because we are stopping at the various churches etc along the route in preparation for our arrival in Santiago itself.
Hey Reb, is it ok if I still keep on going to Finis Terre with the same heart?IMHO, A Camino well-walked with compassion for fellows on the trail, finished-up at the Cathedral with thankfulness, cuts through all the rigmarole and rules. A pilgrimage is between you and God. The rest is noise.
Unless I am mistaken, the 100 km are stated explicitly in the current (2015 / 2016) version of the Compostela which contains the lines perfecto itinere sive pedibus sive equitando post postrema centum milia metrorum, birota vero post ducenta pietatis causa, devote visitasse.
Which means more or less literally: on foot or riding after one hundred thousand meters, by bicycle however after two hundred thousand meters, for religious reasons, as a devout visitor.
One hundred thousand meters = 100 km
Dear Valeria, I meant that an experience of 6-8 weeks on the Road will have a deeper impact on yourself,physically and spiritually, than a 1-2 weeks journey. Or, you you do not need 6,7,8 weeks to cover 100 km !!! When I wrote longer, I meant MORE TIME !!!Having logged in to read a PM I will respond and then go again....
No, sorry, it is the pilgrimage to Santiago and the Cathedral that is meant to be meaningful, the distance is not what matters most. As has already been said it is possible to walk a short pilgrimage with a pilgrim's attitude just as well as a longer one. Time taken can add to the whole, but some of us take 9 or 10 days to walk the distance others can cover in 5...partly because of speed and ability and partly because we are stopping at the various churches etc along the route in preparation for our arrival in Santiago itself.
This is not what concerns me when I suggest that the proposal is elitist. What worries me is the treatment of tourists and tourism. The pejorative language that is used include referring to tourists as illiterate, abusive and without any idea of pilgrimage and their views are antagonistic to the pilgrim tradition. I can only presume that these ideas have been translated accurately enough so that they retain the basic meanings intended. If they do, they paint tourists as some lower order compared to 'true pilgrims'. That is what is elitist.A pilgrim is a person set apart by a holy purpose.
Dougfitz, I believe the camino de santiago is a holy place, and pilgrims are holy people taking part in a special activity.
We all know there are other people on the Way who use its facilities and functions for less-than noble purposes. They have no awareness of what the pilgrimage is about, they apparently have no interest in finding out -- a form of illiteracy. They are taking an extraordinary thing and treating it as a common convenience -- which is a definition for "desecration." If pointing that out makes me an elitist, well. I'll take it. People who are not interested in being pilgrims, or at least being respectful of the pilgrimage, should go have their fun someplace else that is not a holy site.
Ok, I'm sorry as this will seem like I'm making light of this very imporant matter... I'm really not... maybe I'm bringing a little light?
We talk about how busy the last 10okms are, and for some it's a culture shock... when I walked, the last few days did feel like the camino was celebrating our arrival.
It made me think of this video... of a little girl who thought she had to sing really really well in her nativity... I watched an interview with her (now as an adult) and she said she thought she was just singing loud and clear so folks could hear. Either way it's joyous... and maybe all the noise and bussle of the last 100kms is joy too?
Hi Dougfitz,This is not what concerns me when I suggest that the proposal is elitist. What worries me is the treatment of tourists and tourism. The pejorative language that is used include referring to tourists as illiterate, abusive and without any idea of pilgrimage and their views are antagonistic to the pilgrim tradition. I can only presume that these ideas have been translated accurately enough so that they retain the basic meanings intended. If they do, they paint tourists as some lower order compared to 'true pilgrims'. That is what is elitist.
"To me there is a difference between a traveller and a tourist.
@Devon Mike, I said earlier"To me there is a difference between a traveller and a tourist. A tourist travels to 'see the sights', often as many as possible in a given time. A traveller tries to find an interesting way to get from one point to another, engaging with people and places along the way
My position hasn't changed. If you feel the need to change the ordinary meanings of words like traveler or tourist, then any discussion will result in something less than full communication.Let me make it clear that I don't see any need to invest the words 'tourist' and 'sightseeing' with any more than their ordinary meanings. I am happy to be called a tourist and a sightseer.
If you check the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of pilgrim, traveller and tourist, there are differences, although some people may walk for a combination of these things.@Devon Mike, I said earlier
My position hasn't changed. If you feel the need to change the ordinary meanings of words like traveler or tourist, then any discussion will result in something less than full communication.
Sorry Mike, but I must have missed something here. I didn't realize that someone had suggested these words had identical meanings, although I cannot find where right now. I agree that the words have different meanings, I just think it makes conversation easier if we don't give them more meanings than they already have.If you check the Oxford English Dictionary definitions of pilgrim, traveller and tourist, there are differences, although some people may walk for a combination of these things.
Maybe we should just agree to disagree....
I gotta agree, and no it doesn't smack of elitism.Dougfitz, I believe the camino de santiago is a holy place, and pilgrims are holy people taking part in a special activity.
We all know there are other people on the Way who use its facilities and functions for less-than noble purposes. They have no awareness of what the pilgrimage is about, they apparently have no interest in finding out -- a form of illiteracy. They are taking an extraordinary thing and treating it as a common convenience -- which is a definition for "desecration." If pointing that out makes me an elitist, well. I'll take it. People who are not interested in being pilgrims, or at least being respectful of the pilgrimage, should go have their fun someplace else that is not a holy site.
@Mark Lee it is nice to see that, at least in part, you are basing your objection upon observable attributes. The sooner we stop both stereotyping people and pretending that we have some general or particular insight that allows us to determine the state of their mind, the easier I think it will be to move forward on proposals like this.One thing that rubbed me the wrong way, and maybe it's because I'm a lifelong Catholic, is the behavior of so many people in the cathedral in Santiago. Acting like silly tourists.
The thing is, Rebekah, that I don't know that, and I don't think that FICS has adequately demonstrated its truth either. If there were well founded research that demonstrated the truth of this, I would expect that it would have been made available by now. If it is there, we haven't been told about it, and contrarians like me will continue to challenge the validity of premises such as this in any argument.We all know there are other people on the Way who use its facilities and functions for less-than noble purposes.
I walked my first Camino last year, from SJPP to Finisterre. I leave in 3 weeks from my second Camino, the Portugues.
I walked the CF for spiritual reasons, and to test my physical limits. I can honestly say that, personally, I found the last 100km to be the worst part of my Camino. Not only is to too busy (even in September), but there is a noticeable difference in the quality of the Camino itself. Prices rise, and the Camino seems much more commercial than in previous parts of the walk. The pilgrims seemed louder and less respectful, over all. Again, this is just a generalization and from my personal experience. Everyone walks for their own reason, and that's cool. I just found the final 100km to be a bit less respectful to those pilgrims who walked for religious/spiritual reasons.
I think keeping it at 100km would perhaps contain the commercial aspect of the Camino, which perhaps is for the best? Though, I think making the trip mandatory from SJPP wouldn't be too bad either
The thing is, Rebekah, that I don't know that, and I don't think that FICS has adequately demonstrated its truth either. If there were well founded research that demonstrated the truth of this, I would expect that it would have been made available by now. If it is there, we haven't been told about it, and contrarians like me will continue to challenge the validity of premises such as this in any argument.
too many books..and 99% say nothing. And The Way is the only movie I've enjoyed...others not so much.Personally, I think it's a great idea to increase the distance requirements.
However, I think as long as book after book, and movie after movie, romanticize the Camino, people are going to want to walk, Compostela or not.
I can't imagine tour groups sending clients to donativo albergues.
I'd be afraid my folks wouldn't get a bed!
A pilgrim's journey is personal...one can't judge another..be in 100 km or 784km..I will be doing my fist Camino starting April 27,2016 from SJPP to Santiago. I agree that it should be longer than 100k or in my eyes 62 miles.... That is nothing compared to 500 miles... Maybe they should get some other kind of certificate for doing 100k. I too am worried about getting to Sarria and having the same feelings as mentioned above...I will try and keep an open mind. I appreciate all the info and experiences posted on this forum as it will help me to achieve my goal of finishing a very long journey. I cannot wait for the experience to begin. It will be the biggest journey of my life and will allow me the time to reflect on my life both past, present and future. And to test myself physically Hope to see you on the trail! Buen Camino
Patty
Maybe I should have given a definition for long distance foot pilgrimageKathar1na, It was the church who made the 100-km. distance requirement, with much input from the Galician tourist authorities.
I am somewhat perplexed by the saying, "It's my Camino" or "It's your Camino" as a response to people who are offering advice to others on how to get the most out of their Camino.
If I said I was flying into Paris, staying at IBIS hotel at the airport, taking a taxi to Louvre, walking inside, looking at the Mona Lisa, returning to the IBIS, and remaining there for seven days in my room eating room service and watching CNN, I would hope that someone would say, "You know, there is more to Paris than staying at the airport IBIS and visiting the Louvre for an hour. There's are wonderful Impressionist collections at the Orsay, Marmonttan, and the Orangerie. The Eiffel Tower is great. A walk down the Champs Elysees is fun . . . "
Your posting gives me the perfect opportunity to say "thank you" to the many veteran forum members whose sharing of information made it possible for me to enjoy some of the special places along the camino.
Oh my! Perfectly succinct!Chaucer's pilgrims included a vulgar miller, a gluttonous monk, a less-than-chaste friar, a bawdy woman, a snooty knight, a greedy merchant, an air-headed squire, etc., etc. These pilgrims, although fictional, represented a very believable cross-section of pilgrims in medieval time, when pilgrimages were made for ostensibly religious reasons only.
The Canterbury bunch doesn't sound a whole lot different from today's pilgrims -- everyone has a different reason for undertaking a pilgrimage. People are the same now as they were then -- party-lovers side-by-side with the humble supplicants. Changing the length of the pilgrimage route won't change people, but it might help manage the physical load of the Camino and distribute the traffic more equitably.
And who would ever have thought I would have "liked" a RobertS26 post.
But this individualistic "it's my way," sorry Camino!, business just irritates me. It irritates me because it takes advantage of all the volunteers and yes, investors, who open their homes, inveatments, to receive little next to nothing, if perhaps, andoften, nothing.
It irritates me because the few who fall in the truly aching or dimished capacity people are being confused with those looking for a tourist experience for a fraction of the cost of their regular holidays, to the benefit of the tourigrinos.
Ask yourself : would you be walking the Camino if you were being charged the 80Us$ or so dismal US motels in the middle of nowhere charge for a night? Would walking the Camino warant this for you?
If not, start thinking you may be a tourigrino, and that perhaps paying the 80$ a night in a donativo is the right thing to do, remember that the only thing the Cathedral asks you to do is to walk ALL of the last 100K, and that, just perhaps, it might make it more "your Camino" if you gave up your bed for those walking from much further than you, much more tired and blistered and shinsplint than you.
Afterall, if your goal is to pray over Santiago's bones, and not get a certificate to put on your wall , you don't need to walk. The Cathedral doesn't say praying over the remains with walking is wrong, it does ask that if your pilgrimage is about walking, that you abide by a few rules.
Problem kicks in when people "see the light" after walking, which opens up the whole thing to the mess we are seeing today.
As far as I understand it, initially the net of publicly funded albergues was intended for those people who really do not have enough money. I do think that the overwhelming majority of people walking today can afford $80 per night but would not be prepared to pay that for their pilgrimage experience. This, of course, would really be in the spirit of pilgrimage (à la Middle Ages) where you were also supposed, as a pilgrim, to financially support poor moneyless pilgrims, ie those without sufficient financial means on the way and at home. The modern pilgrim wants to live a simple life, at least temporarily, but doesn't want to be poor or become poor.I'm guessing most people would not be able to afford 80$ a night for their trip... for a shared dorm with no facilities.
As far as I understand it, initially the net of publicly funded albergues was intended for those people who really do not have enough money. I do think that the overwhelming majority of people walking today can afford $80 per night but would not be prepared to pay.
The modern pilgrim wants to live a simple life, at least temporarily, but doesn't want to be poor or become poor.
However, in my opinion, while comparisons to the Middle Ages are very interesting they are of little relevance for the core of the issues on the last stretch of the Camino Frances
I'm getting more confused as we progress here as to what the problem is? Is it the number of pilgrims? Is it the attititude and behaviour of some pilgrims? Is it the faith of the pilgrim? Is it the distance travelled? Is it the busy 100km only on the CF?
For me, the point of a discussion is to hear and to understand different views (as well as facts)I'm not sure I know what the modern pilgrim wants, but I wanted to celebrate life... and it seemed that everyone I walked with had a different reason. I'm not trying to be difficult (it's difficult to convey that with written text) ... but I dont think I agree this statement.
[Santiago de Compostela] was not a local or regional shrine that gradually gained fame through popular acclaim and miracles. On the contrary, it sprang into being with fully-formed international appeal.
Is this really correct?Documentation and history say that Santiago de Compostela was never a place of worship for the Galicians, who had their own shrines and pilgrimages.
For many others nowadays, the pilgrimage is understood only as starting near the Pyrenees and ending in Santiago de Compostela. However, the great European pilgrimage age encompassed innumerous long and shorter pilgrimages criss-crossing Europe in all directions. People living along what is now called Camino Frances even undertook pilgrimages to the shrine of St Martin in Tours, for example.For many, the pilgrimage is understood only as a four- or five-day stroll through Galicia – a reductionist view antagonistic to the historical sense of the great European pilgrimage tradition.
But I do know that I could not afford to spend 70€/80$ per night on a room. If my average spend is say 10€ on a bed for 35 days that's 350€... if I had to spend 70€ for 35 nights I would have to spend 2,450€... that would put the camino out of reach for a great many people.
I sing in a band and we travel around France... we usually spend around 35-40€ a night on a private room (each) with a private bathroom, wifi, restaurant... and if we can get it they'll have secure parking as we have a van full of gear. OK, they are usually edge of town big chain motels but they're great... 70€ a night is not a cheap hotel. ...
A very pertinent point Les Brass. The cost of accommodation in France was the reason I had to abandon my plans to walk from Le Puy to SdC. Being on a low income I could not afford to walk the Camino again if rooms were at this rate but 6 euros for a bed, disposable sheet & pillowcase, hot showers etc., seems low to me and I would certainly be willing to pay more to ensure the survival of public albergues, and to pay for a bed for another pilgrim if they lacked the money.
Perhaps there is another aspect that we have not considered here and that is that (to my knowledge) medieval pilgrims made this journey only once (including the return home) in their lifetime, but many of us - that includes me - now want to repeat the experience. So I offer up a proposalwhich no doubt will prompt a whole new area of controversy and opportunity for guilt-inducing: No-one can walk the same Camino route more than once UNLESS they agree to pay 80 euros to stay at public albergues and make a large donation for the swinging of the botofumeiro so that new pilgrims will be able to enjoy the spectacle.
Wow. Thank you!The Doctor is IN: There are several themes that permeate this thread…Receiving the Compostela is a Catholic thing, a spiritual thing…a reward at the end of the tunnel…er, Camino.
For others, it’s a “surprise”…had the pilgrim not known there is such a thing as the Compostela when they set off along the Way, this bonus will now reside in their hold baggage among the forty unmentionables they refused to wash. That’s what moms are for…right?
So, let’s tackle the “Catholic” thing first.
Regardless of whether the route to the end of the world (Finisterre) passed through what is now Santiago presages the revelation that the remains of St James resides there, the Apostle is Catholic, the cathedral is Catholic, the pilgrim’s Mass is Catholic, and the Compostela is Catholic.
Let’s for the moment disregard the whys and the wherefores that the Compostela can be received by lapsed, or never was Catholics…these pilgrims may indicate their sojourn was “spiritual”. They were lost, but now are found.
Or, none of the above, been there, done that…got the Compostela!
To assuage the disappointment of many that set off with the intent of walking a great distance to Santiago and because of one malady or another…get to Santiago without the necessary continuous 100 km into it’s environs (isn’t that what this thread is about)…they can now get a “distance traveled” certificate.
Here’s my point: Men and women with the power to shape, or skew a popular (read religious or cheap vacation) undertaking, or habit (bottled drinking water) into a revenue generating stream will do so.
It’s for each of us to exercise our free will as we set out to walk the Way for whatever reason and against whatever odds.
When the Pharisees and Herodians try to trap Jesus, he responds by asking for a coin.
Examining it he says, “Whose image is this and whose inscription?” When his enemies say “Caesar’s,” he tells them to render it to Caesar. In other words, that which bears the image of Caesar belongs to Caesar.
The key word in Christ’s answer is “image.”
This has consequences for our own lives because those of us that walk the Way as Catholics, and many other Christians, believe we’re made in the image of God.
Once we accept this, the impact of Christ’s response to his enemies becomes clear. Jesus isn’t being clever. He’s not offering a politically correct (my thought) commentary. He’s making a claim on every human being Christian or not.
He’s saying, “render unto Caesar those things that bear Caesar’s image, but more importantly, render unto God that which bears God’s image” -- in other words, you and me. All of us!
In the time of the Caesars, there was no more powerful nation in that known world.
Today, what took the Roman legions months of walking to enforce that which was “Caesars”, we of the Forum can accomplish in mere days, with a bit of walking added in.
Many of us will find ourselves different from the person that started out, while others will return again and again seeking, ever seeking. In the final analysis, all of us are fortunate to meet others that choose, for whatever reason, to walk along the Milky Way with us. God Bless you all!
Arn
For many this is something to tick off or put on their CV and the true spirit of The Camino is lost.
How about for Australians??If the problem is Spaniards then change the required distance for Spaniards only.
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