Holy Year in Santiago

Spain is bracing itself for a surge of interest this summer along one of the three great pilgrimage routes of history, the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. With continuing support from the Council of Europe, the Ministry of Culture is completing Plan Jacobeo 99 to restore scores of national monuments. The Plan was drawn up in recognition that the usual thousands of pilgrims, wearing the traditional scallop shell, will be swollen this Jubileo, or holy year, when the saint’s day, July 25th, falls on a Sunday.

With the millennium also looming, more crowds will be drawn to the shrine, which contains the relics of Spain’s patron saint, the apostle James, whose body was brought by boat from the Holy Land and arrived at Padron on the Galician coast before AD 100. After his grave was discovered some 750 years later, the land route to it became one of the busiest ‘main roads’ in medieval Europe.