BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PILGRIMAGE TO COMPOSTELA

The pilgrimage road to Compostela enjoys an unprecedented success today due largely to the attention afforded by European media. Pilgrims are fundamentally different one from another, some of them cover the entire distance in one go, whilst others "do" the road in several stages. Their motivations, either a mixture of traditional devotion or the search for a new spirituality, oscillate between the opportunity for a cheap holiday, the desire for new encounters whose finalities remain ill-defined, an athletic achievement, the desire to immerse themselves in the Middle Ages viewed as a former Golden Age, the chance to while away newly found spare time, the need to break away from daily routines or to overcome an overwhelming grief.