What is “The Camino”?

The Camino is typically associated with the 500-mile route from the base of the French Pyrenees westward though the great cities of Pamplona, Burgos and Leon (and the first Camino that James walked).

Technically, though, that route is the Camino Frances—reflecting its French connection and the fact that most pilgrims who walked it over the centuries were French or starting in France—and is but one of a multitude of other Camino routes.

Hence more accurately, the Camino de Santiago—to use the correct full title—is the collective name for that multitude of pilgrimage routes laid across Europe that, like a river’s tributaries, finally all converge at the city of Santiago de Compostela. There, in the basement of the city’s magnificent baroque cathedral, the remains of Saint James the apostle are said to reside.

The claim that Saint James preached the gospel in Spain soon after the Crucifixion, and that after his martyrdom in Jerusalem his body was smuggled back to Galicia by a party of Spanish disciples, is certainly contested. There aren’t many scholars who agree that Saint James ever came to Spain. And nothing of the sort is suggested in the Acts of the Apostles, where his death is recorded (Acts 12:2).

“It is only an illusion, but so long has it been in the Spanish mind, so attractive is it in itself, that long ago, in the way of all the best hallucinations, it achieved a kind of truth,” is the verdict of Jan Morris in her wonderful book Spain.

Indeed, the contest history nowadays is all but irrelevant. This is because the modern-day Camino has basically transcended Saint James and the claims around him. Hence you will not find many pilgrims put off by the controversial history around Saint James in Spain.

This is partly because nonbelievers are just as likely as the religiously inspired to undertake this epic journey (camino means “journey” or “way” in Spanish). Furthermore, Camino pilgrims—atheist or religious, almost everyone willingly refers to themselves as a pilgrim— are united by more than what divides them.

On my first Camino, I continually heard pilgrims lamenting the same problems and trappings of modern society, and of undertaking the Camino to gain thinking space amid the pressures and whirl of modern life.

“Everything is done at walking pace, in contrast to a world that, now more than ever, is ceaselessly rushing ahead faster than we can quite compute,” Peter Stanford writes about the Camino in his book Pilgrimage: In Search of Meaning.

“To catch a glimpse of the transcendent, otherwise impossible in the hustle-bustle and hassle of modern life, requires making one almighty and counter-intuitive effort — like going on a pilgrimage in a secular age.”