Between the history, heritage and mystique of the Camino de Santiago
Five paths, different departures, always the same goal: Santiago de Compostela.
It was the 1990s of a century now saved in books, cassettes, film CDs and documentaries. Cell phones didn’t exist, the internet was just taking its first steps.
I have always been a history enthusiast, curious about heritage, an “essayist” eager to learn about the ethnographic history of people and places. I decided to get on one of those trains that traveled across Europe (known as interrails) and the first time I went to Madrid, I discovered, in the middle of the Rastro market, a booklet about the medieval routes to Santiago de Compostela, how they attracted knights, monks , master masons, minstrels, and even the story of a priest who marked the paths from France to the western tip of the Iberian Peninsula.
I was curious. Upon returning to the city where I was born, the city of Porto, I decided to take another train, heading to a destination that, in Madrid, caught my deep attention. Santiago de Compostela, here I come.
In the capital of Galicia I discovered that, despite being born into a Catholic family, I knew very little about Jesus’ most faithful companions, perhaps due to immaturity, perhaps because there was very little catechesis… Catechetical.
When I arrived in Compostela I felt an unparalleled energy, an atmosphere that pushed me to the heart of its historical “shell”, the cathedral, where I learned, through the voices of two characters that I had the privilege of meeting on this first “pilgrim” adventure, that on that epic altar of art rested the Apostle Santiago Maior. One of the figures, the famous “Zapatones”, the most famous “pilgrim” in Obradoiro square, told me — among photographs he took with tourists — that more than a thousand years ago, people from all over Europe walked from the most distant corners from the old continent to Santiago, to kneel next to the relics of the holy evangelizer of Spain.
He also told me about traditions, about what to eat between the streets of Franco and Vilar and because it was Friday there was “Queimada Galega” (a drink made from pomace, coffee, lemon and sugar, which is set on fire) in the association “Lar das Meigas”. There, where the evil witches of Galician mythology practiced their “meigallos”, I met the “Wizard of Oz”, a “burner” dressed as a monk, with a kind of shell, hanging by a red thread, around his neck, which, As he stirred a flaming blue liquid, he swore a prayer, a “conxuro”, as the Galicians call it, almost imperceptible (my knowledge of the Galician language, at that time, was non-existent). At the end of the theatrical Queimada, I went to talk to the elderly artist and everything he told me awakened a tremendous revelation in me: I had to walk the Camino de Santiago.
The “magician”, now stripped of his witchcraft clothes, told me about the shell, a scallop, symbol of the pilgrims of Santiago, he told me about the arrows of the Path that the priest I read about in Madrid, Elías Valiña, better known as the “curate of Cebreiro”, was painting, but, most important of all, he told me how it all began and the starting point of the whole story: Oviedo and the pilgrimage that the king of Asturias, Afonso II the Chaste, carried out to Santiago’s tomb, recently discovered by a hermit, named Paio, a finding legitimized by Teodomiro, at the time (between the years 830 and 839) bishop of the diocese of Iria Flavia, current city of Padrón. And that Afonso II followed a route that would later be called the “Primitive Path”. But he also told me about a “Portuguese path”, a Mozarabic (or Prata) path and even the most special path of all, the richest in heritage, history and legend: the French Way. Without forgetting Finisterre or Muxia.
I was mesmerized as I heard about Charlemagne and his nephew Roland and the famous battle of Roncesvalles, about a book (the Codex Calixitino) that served as the first guide for medieval pilgrims, about the Lady of the Pillar of Zaragoza, about the Templar churches and castles , the Benedictine monasteries and the grand Gothic cathedrals of Burgos and León. But he also said that there was a Portuguese Way, and that this one started…from Porto!
A year later I left for Oviedo and there began the first of many adventures, of the Camino de Santiago that I have already done, some of them, I confess, more than once: Camino Primitivo, Camino Português, Camino Francês, Camino Inglés, Camino de Finisterre. From adventure to study was a leap.
After finishing my social communications course and getting tired of my career as a journalist (with almost 15 years of experience), I returned to the deepest love of my adolescence: the study of heritage and History and the transmission of that love to everyone who was willing to listen. or reading.
As a teacher, I returned to the stones of the path and convinced students of all ages (with special emphasis on my students from the Universidade Sénior Contemporânea do Porto, some of them over 80 years old) to accompany me on an adventure of modern times, among destinations where time has not even passed, addicting them with the still pure atmosphere of the “vieiros” in Compostela.
The Camino de Santiago represents for me the most vivid demonstration of a telluric relationship between faith and Celtic traditions, which I explore with avidity, between contemplative meditation and the inner peace that can only be achieved by sleeping outside to the sound of owls.
And it is an addiction that cannot be shaken, that there is no cure, that intensifies every time I hear a new legend, like that of the roosters of Santo Domingo de la Calzada (or our Galo de Barcelos), or of the Pedra Furada de Santa Leocádia, every time I exchange contacts with pilgrims “near the door” or join those from the other side of the world in some hostel. From Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and even Japan, there were many travelers to Santiago that I learned to call “friends” as they told me how stepping on the stones recorded their happiness, ending up in the end always wishing an effusive and affectionate “Buen Camiño”!
The Camino de Santiago gave me a lot and never took it away from me, it made my “humanity” grow, helping to pacify me on an emotional level, it provided me with time travel, to a period when it was just me and the stones on the Camino. , where time passed as slowly as that time when the abbot of Armenteira got lost in paradise. For me the Path was (and still is) Eden, where I ate from the tree of wisdom, where I chose good and eradicated evil. But this time, God was happy.
Ultreia et Suseia
Artur Filipe dos Santos | PhD in Communication and Heritage from the University of Vigo, Spainhe is a university professor and researcher. An enthusiast of the Camino de Santiago, he is the author of the blog “O Meu Camino de Santiago” and author of several articles and lectures on the Jacobean tradition.