Hospitallers and pilgrims regret that on the Jacobean route there are more and more groups of young people who walk with music or singing and disturbing the peace of the journey
17 Aug 2023. Updated at 7:26 p.m.
The warnings of overcrowding and incivility on the part of some pilgrims that have been repeated in Santiago de Compostela for weeks are not only specific to the goal of the Camino. Although most of the incidents have occurred on the stoic stones of the Plaza del Obradoiro, the city has lived mainly in the neighborhoods of San Pedro and the entire old town. spectacles of singing and shouting regardless of the timewhich alters the coexistence between neighbor and walker.
But the entire Jacobean route has a soundtrack for a few months now. Although last year we already noticed the huge influx of religious youth groups Due to his European Pilgrimage (PEJ), something similar happens this year due to the visit of Pope Francis to Lisbon within the framework of the World Youth Days (WYD), which filled the Camino, once again, with boys belonging to these associations. In the case of the French route, which begins in the French country to cross the Peninsula and enter Galicia through O Cebreiro, it can be seen that many of these groups leave from Sarria, given that it is the closest point to Santiago from which they can travel. can start and have the right to compostela.
It is no coincidence that, for example, Quino Maroto ends his journeys in that town in Lugo, while others reach Fisterra. This is an experienced pilgrim who manages the Instagram account @caminopassion, specialized in the Jacobean route and with almost 20,000 followers. He explained in a comment to a publication by Compostela Resiste who made this decision to not having to run into the large groups of young people who do not take the Path as, from their point of view, it should be done. “I don’t like what is happening at all, the Camino is an internal journey and from Sarria onwards the circumstances do not exist to do it.”
His words serve as a reference. Speaking with hospitaleros from Melide and Arzúa, where the Camino de Santiago passes, the general feeling of traditional pilgrims, so to speak, can be confirmed. Laura Carregal works at the Ultreia hostel, in Arzúa, and mentions comments from her guests equating to the Camino from Sarria “ao Rocío”, because of the commotion that arises on the paths due to the music and the voices that the young Catholics make. He points out, in the same way, that he is not aware of any uncivil act either in the shelter where he works or in its surroundings.
Antonio Pérez Morata, manager of the O Apalpador hostel in Melide, affirms in line with what his colleague explains that it would be positive for all those interested in the Camino (economically, religiously and spiritually) that start controlling this type of behavior. “I think this is a lack of respect for what the Jacobean route represents, which should not be confused with a party destination, but rather one of meditation and even traveling discipline.”
The economic aspect also has its importance: «It seems to me that they are also making a mistake, because These large groups leave less money than individual walkers or couples, even small groups. And not only that, hosting so many who come together collapses the hostel so that I am left without beds for traditional pilgrims, something that is not fair either. Laura Carregal, from Arzúa, concludes the argument when she says that for dinner, for example, these guided pilgrims go to the supermarket to get food or get it directly from the bus that accompanies them by cart, depriving both her and her “colleagues” from Santiago you have income that can be spent on dinner or lunch.
There are also experienced pilgrims who go in groups. One of them is the Italian Laura Cesarini, from the association Badizo Trekking, which organizes expeditions to Santiago de Compostela for people traveling alone from its headquarters in Naples. They also organize, in collaboration with other institutions, the Camino for people with reduced mobility. She has a word for people who go to Compostela but do not do the Camino: «We call them “turrigrinos”».
«There are more and more of these, who do the Camino de Santiago without knowing what it represents and bothering during the stages, people who he just walks through it like a party, no longer as a way to enjoy nature and let alone connect with oneself or with the Galician landscape. She, who is preparing to leave again at the end of this week with another group, He hopes that the situation can be reversed.: “It is still possible to find that character of the Camino that I and my companions have fallen in love with since the first stage,” he explains.
The fatigue of the pilgrim who is also Compostela
It is not necessary to take testimony from walkers who could almost carry the historic license plate. Fran is a boy, resident in Santiago, who passes through Obradoiro to work every day and who in October 2020 ventured from O Cebreiro to Compostela with his girlfriend. He points out that in those days, still pandemic, he lived what could have been “one of the last roads like the ones before” that could have been done in modern times.
The tracks of the French variant were almost empty, with only a few purebred pilgrims present on them, the kind who finish one Camino and begin another. Fran had to sleep next to bearded men who hid the bottle under the sheet and who began to tell stories of fear while the light of the moon entered through the windows of the shared housing of the hostel. «It was a fantastic experience, even for a person like me, who wouldn’t be from Santiago if they went to Picheleira», she reports.
That is why, taking into account the Camino that he had the opportunity to do, he is very surprised by all the paraphernalia with which walkers enter today, “something that I honestly cannot stand.” One would expect it from the Xacobean years, from both, but seeing that the constant is maintained in 2023 is even shocking for him, “because it gives the feeling that it will never finish.”
The data shows the words
The Pilgrim Reception Office offers figures updated daily to be able to see in the statistics all these problems listed by those on the ground. The rate of Spaniards who begin their journey from Sarria oscillates over 60% (with centesimal variations each day) so far in 2023, while in 2011, the last one after a Xacobeo as is the present, the that departed from the Lugo town represented 29.5%.
It is worth remembering that Sarria is the closest point to the Obradoiro from which the compostela is delivered to the one that arrives in Santiago. Precisely for this reason all excursions begin from there and it is becoming an ending point for those pilgrims who still want to live an experience like that of yesteryear. It is true that, in the world of paid vacations where every day off counts, Going to Roncesvalles to begin the Camino is unfeasible for many.
The only one of the percentages that increases is that of Sarria, maintaining that of San Juan de Pie de Puerto (considered the beginning of the French Way and located in the south of the French country) and others such as León, O Cebreiro, Ponferrada or even Roncesvalles decreasing , characteristic beginning of the walk already within the Spanish borders. At this time, the percentage figures are very similar to those of 2021 and 2022, holy years.
Filed in:Camino de Santiago French Way
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