After our first day in Santiago de Compostela, I’d lost count of the number of people with staffs, seashells and gourds as adornments attached to their high tech hiking gear and trekking poles. The Camino de Santiago’s version of virtue signaling is a cottage industry all unto itself, and the virtuous are everywhere. So many are there in fact, they are now viewed as something akin to a Biblical plague by locals fed up of their city being turned into a theme park for Camino cosplay.
More than 440,000 ‘pilgrims’ arrived in the city last year, and that number is likely to be higher this year. In the surrounding countryside, you can’t avoid seeing hikers and pilgrims scattered along the roads and tracks making their way towards the town. This has led authorities to tax both hikers and non-hikers with a daily fee low enough not to dissuade anyone from visiting, and high enough to make decent money. A lose, win situation.
Admittedly, we were there in August and were definitely adding to the problem, but there are undeniably large numbers of people recently arrived from the camino clogging up Santiago’s ancient streets, tap-tapping their way along the cobbles with metal tipped staffs. Needless to say, we had not walked any part of the camino, but were spending a couple of days in this extraordinary town before going north to the rugged Galician coast to escape the blistering heat.
It’s easy to see why people would visit Santiago de Compostela, it is a city of superlatives. To be fair to all the hikers, there have been pilgrims making their way here to pray to the bones of Santiago, or St. James, for over a thousand years. Yet, it is a small place of around 100,000 residents and on a Sunday in August it definitely felt overwhelmed. Even then, away from the main squares and streets, it’s still possible to find some tranquility.
Truthfully, Santiago’s historic heart is a wonder to behold. Narrow stone streets weave between picturesque plazas with ancient churches and monasteries, all dominated by the immense bulk of the cathedral. It’s no surprise people are overawed upon entering the town after weeks of walking in the Spanish countryside. Some even go a little crazy as religious fervor and dehydration produce Santiago’s own version of Jerusalem Syndrome.
You get a real sense of the place in the confined medieval streets but, on the hill near the Convento de Belvís or at the top of the Parque da Alameda, the panorama over the city gives you a sense of its majesty. UNESCO called the historic centre “one of the world’s most beautiful urban areas” when it bestowed World Heritage status on the old town. It’s hard to disagree with that accolade.
Yet, outside Santiago’s glorious centre, it really feels like what it truly is, a small Spanish provincial town with a big church. Albeit, a town that is also capital of Galicia and has a university that boosts the population by around a third when all the students are here. The mix of tourists and students ensures a good and affordable food scene. We had fabulous Galician specialities, including exquisite seafood washed down with Albariño at Langrina.
The streets of Santiago de Compostela are soaked in twelve centuries of history, and the town played a critical role in the Reconquista over the Moorish kingdoms. So while it’s a small place it is also endlessly fascinating. The hubbub of crowded streets doesn’t always make it easy, but this is somewhere to amble and observe, because everywhere you look history and legend are writ large.
