Course description

The hospitality demonstrated on the pilgrimage routes made this practice one of the hallmarks of the Pilgrim's Way to Santiago, constituting a health and spiritual aid service of varied origin, ecclesiastical and civil, royal, aristocratic or popular. Charity and hospitality on the Pilgrims' Way to Santiago de Compostela, as commonplace events in medieval society, inspired the founding of hospitals dedicated to meeting the spiritual and material, food, health and hygiene needs of the growing number of pilgrims. Depending on the origin of their foundation, the care and reception centres can be classified into royal, episcopal, cathedral, military order, monastic, noble, parish, guild and brotherhood hospitals.

As in past centuries, the current international context is key to understanding the Jacobean phenomenon and the growing success of the Pilgrim's Way to Santiago and, consequently, the vitality of Jacobean hospitality. The first decades of the 21st century are characterised by the advance of communications and real-time information, thanks to digitalisation, new data storage devices and archives, the generalisation of the internet and the development of social networks. The network of routes of the Way of Saint James, as an active part of this globality, develops a ‘low-cost connectivity’ based on the immediacy and warmth of human relations.

The warm informative and accompanying work of the associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago and the exercise of hospitality are examples of the vigour and relevance of the development of human values in the pilgrimage to Santiago in the 21st century.