Today, being a normal summer’s day in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten, a predicted 2,000 to 3,000 slightly unusual-looking people will stagger into the main square of one of Europe’s best-preserved medieval cities.
Wide-eyed, weather-beaten and stiff-legged, they will be easily spotted among the crowds gazing up at the façade of the cathedral, which fills the square’s eastern side. Some may shed a tear or two, others will grin from ear to ear, and all will eventually slope off in the direction of a nearby building to get a certificate, here called a compostela.
These wide-eyed and weather-beaten individuals are pilgrims, and they will have just completed what is the most popular long-distance walk in the world, as well as the world’s oldest and longest-lasting form of mass tourism: the Camino de Santiago
de Compostela.
Pilgrimage to this Galician city started way back in the 8th century. Fed by the cult of St James (Santiago), who had a habit of appearing on battlefields and saving the day, numbers increased exponentially to a peak of half a million a year by the 12th century.
A whole network of pilgrim lodges, monasteries and hospitals sprang up along the path to cater for this massive migration, and the first ever guide book, the Codex Calixtinus, written by a 12th-century monk, detailed the sights and services along the way.
Fast forward to the 21st century and these days the various routes of the Way of St James (for there’s not just one Camino, but several) are fully detailed online. The overall experience is not so much changed since medieval times, because you can still stay overnight in official lodges or albergues, some of them practically for free, and you still get a compostela on arrival, provided you’ve been diligent in getting your log book stamped along the way.
This year will be a real test for the Camino infrastructure, however. After centuries of much reduced numbers pilgrims are multiplying again, from 100,000 in 2006 to 150,000 last year. And this year is a Holy Year, which only occurs when St James’s Day falls on a Sunday (25 July), meaning pilgrims can hopefully earn extra points upstairs. Moreover a Hollywood movie, The Way (starring Martin Sheen), is to be released later in the year, and even the Pope is said to be putting in an appearance.
Already the pilgrims’ office is reporting increases of 37 per cent on last year, so a total of 250,000 is well possible. And that is just the pilgrims who get the compostela, because there are lots more walkers who don’t bother the statisticians; factor in those, and the total could match that 12th-century peak.
And there’s the rub. Lots of today’s ‘pilgrims’ are actually just long-distance walkers out to enjoy an inexpensive, companionable walk, through a landscape that can be wild and fierce one day, and then mellow and luxuriant the next.
For them, the spectacular Holy Year swinging of the massive incense burner in the Cathedral’s daily pilgrim Mass has limited spiritual significance, and is more of a circus act. The clergy are irked by the daily round of applause.
The wording of the compostela has had to be changed in acknowledgement of this new breed of walker, to emphasise a cultural as well as a spiritual journey. Official hostels on the route have started to make a nominal charge, rather than just asking for a voluntary donation, to try to limit the freeloaders.
And this year’s big question will be whether the essentially medieval infrastructure will be able to cope with the increased numbers as Holy Year reaches its peak. Tents and village halls have been made ready, and pilgrims will be starting out at the crack of dawn to sprint from one hostel to the next to be sure of a place to sleep. It’ll be just like the good/bad old days.
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