Since the Middle Ages, people have been walking from all over Europe to the city of Santiago de Compostela, the purported burial site of Jesus’s disciple James. As we’ve traveled around Galicia, the far northwestern region of Spain, we’ve seen lots of people of various nationalities walking parts of the Camino de Santiago (Way of Saint James). They’re instantly distinguishable from other tourists by their backpacks (always with a rain cover), their hiking poles, and their steady, labored gait. They look like people who have been walking for many days.
Some pilgrims (as the walkers are called) do the Camino for religious reasons. Others do it for contemplation, for the challenge, to connect with history, or to see a lot of European countryside up close at a slow pace. Unlike other long-distance trails, which involve camping, the Camino zigzags between villages, with a network of hostels that cater to pilgrims. Some of the hostels are in current or former monasteries or convents that have been hosting religious travelers for centuries.
Melissa and I felt a bit sheepish taking a train to Santiago from Pontevedra, our first stop in Galicia, traveling in just an hour a route that takes pilgrims two or three days to hike. But as we walked uphill into the old town at dusk from our hotel, we felt as overawed by Santiago as the lowliest, trudging pilgrim. Nothing in our nice old town of Pontevedra prepared us for the scale and grandness of Santiago. This place was rich and important, and its buildings attest to that.
The Cathedral of Santiago—the second most important pilgrimage site in medieval Europe after Saint Peter’s in Rome—is huge and imposing. Built on a hill, its Baroque spires dominate the skyline of Santiago. The cathedral is surrounded by other enormous buildings: a pilgrims’ hospital (now hotel) founded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1499, palaces built for archbishops and noble families, convents and monasteries (it seems like all of the important Catholic orders wanted to have a place in Santiago), and grand university buildings funded by monarchs and archbishops to God’s (and their) glory. The scale of the buildings, some with elaborate carvings and giant statues, felt more like the imperial capital of Vienna, Austria, than like a semirural area in a far corner of Spain.
It was wonderful to sit outside the cathedral and watch pilgrims approach, their faces full of wonder or joy—whether out of religious devotion or because they’d finally reached their long-imagined destination. From quiet, solo walkers to noisy, cheerful groups, the pilgrims dropped their packs and poles and sat in the big plaza outside the cathedral, taking pictures of themselves and their companions, writing in their journals, and reveling in the knowledge that they’d achieved what they set out to do. It was a joyous place for people watching.
Alas, the inside of the cathedral didn’t live up to the grand exterior. (If we were pilgrims, we would have been disappointed in it as a destination.) It has some nice side chapels, including the remnants of a 12th-century chapel that was swallowed by the ever-expanding structure. But the center of the cathedral is dominated by the gaudiest, ugliest Baroque altar we’ve ever seen. It wasn’t so much the gold leaf on every conceivable surface as the ranks of badly carved, creepily elongated cherubs holding up the canopy that made us shake our heads in horrified wonder. We were glad we didn’t have to think, “We walked all this way for that?!”
Many pilgrims, having walked west from the French border across almost the whole width of Spain, dream of ending their journey at the Atlantic Ocean. So they continue on from Santiago to various spots on the coast—the most famous being Fisterre, whose name means the End of the Earth. There, by a lighthouse high above the sea, at nearly the farthest west point in Spain, many pilgrims truly feel they’ve reached the end of their way.
Traditionally, pilgrims left their well-worn hiking boots at Fisterre. But the authorities discourage that to prevent littering. So now, many pilgrims burn their hiking socks at Fisterre, or leave a sticker from home on any of the flat surfaces around the lighthouse—a visual record of the people from around the world who have reached this end of the Earth.
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