For Roman Catholics who take part in the pilgrimage, walking it during a Jubilee Year gives them the chance to receive the plenary indulgence, which grants them the full remission of the temporal punishment for their sins. The numbers of pilgrims arriving in Santiago over the next year-and-a-half will be boosted after Pope Francis extended the 2021 holy year dedicated to St. “And like my husband says, we don’t have that much time left anyway, so we have to make the most of it.” “For old people, one year of pandemic has felt like five,” Naty Arias, 81, said while walking the Camino with her 84-year-old husband and two of their daughters. As it did around the world, the disease took its biggest toll on the country’s oldest residents. Spain’s Health Ministry has reported the deaths of over 79,000 people from COVID-19. A few hundred arrive in Santiago each day, compared to the several thousand exhausted pilgrims swinging their walking sticks along the city’s cobblestone streets during a typical summer. Now that travel is again permitted, more people from Spain and elsewhere in Europe are walking the ancient path, although many of the hostels that cater to pilgrims them are still closed. Only 50,000 walked it last year, when Spain blocked both foreign and domestic travel except for during the summer months.īefore a state of emergency that limited travel between Spain’s regions ended on May 9, only a handful of Spanish pilgrims were arriving in Santiago each day and registering with the Pilgrim’s Reception Office to receive their official credential for having completed the pilgrimage. Over 340,000 people from all over the world walked “El Camino” in 2019. It is now supported by a wide network of religious and civic organizations and served by public and private hostels at prices for all pocketbooks. Pilgrims have come to Santiago for a millennium, but the number of both believers and non-believers making the trip boomed in recent decades after regional authorities revived the route. The pilgrimage has its roots in the alleged discovery of the tomb in the 9th century. Whichever route one takes, they all end at the Santiago’s baroque cathedral, where believers can visit what is said to be the tomb of James, the apostle who, according to Catholic tradition, brought Christianity to Spain and Portugal. The Camino de Santiago is actually a series of paths that fan out beyond the Iberian Peninsula and spread across Europe. The village in the green hills of northwest Spain is about two days away from the medieval cathedral in Santiago that is the traditional ending point. This pandemic has taught us to give more importance to what we have and to take a good long look at yourself,” Ferrón, 33, said while resting on a climb near Arzúa. She and two lifelong friends flew from their homes in Spain’s North Africa enclave of Ceuta to spend a week walking the final 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the pilgrimage route. Some travelers taking to the Camino are like Laura Ferrón, whose marriage ended during Spain’s lockdown and who fears she might lose her job because the bank she works for plans massive layoffs. James due to pandemic-related travel restrictions, soul-searchers hoping to heal wounds left by the coronavirus are once again strapping on backpacks and following trails marked with a seashell emblem to the shrine in the city of Santiago de Compostela. James.īut after a year of being kept off the Way of St. Committing to the pilgrim’s path has for centuries been a source of renewal for those willing to put their lives on hold and spend days, weeks or even months crossing Spain along the Camino de Santiago, a journey that takes hikers to the reported burial place of the apostle St.
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