[Gocamino] Background on credenciales

[Elcaminomejala at aol.com]

2000 Years of  the Camino de Santiago:  Where Did It Come From? Where Is It  
Going? 

The following  paper by the Confraternity of St. Jame's former Chairman, 
Laurie Dennett,  was given at a Gathering of Pilgrims in Toronto on 14 May 2005. 
You may  quote reasonable extracts without permission, though we would 
appreciate  an acknowledgement. For more substantial use, please contact the  
Secretary. 

EXCERPTS

Don Elias Valiña Sampedro  

...Galician priest D Elias Valiña Sampedro, having restored the  church and 
village of O Cebreiro, now turned his attention to the  pilgrimage route ...In 
the Holy Year 1971 he produced a simple handbook  called Caminos a Compostela, 
small enough to fit into a pocket and  containing only the information useful 
to a pilgrim on foot. This was the  forerunner of the more extensive guide 
commissioned from D Elias by the  Spanish Ministry of Tourism in 1982 - another 
Holy Year - and reprinted in  1985. All of these had the effect of increasing 
the number of pilgrims  from Spain and other countries. Meanwhile, also in 
1982, D Elias undertook  what was probably the single most essential project to 
revive the Camino  Francés - he waymarked it along its entire length from the 
Pyrenees to the  cathedral in Santiago. 

Thus there  came into being the ubiquitous yellow arrow, a symbol he devised 
and  painted on trees, rocks and buildings using surplus paint begged from the 
 Galician highway authority. 

The crucial few years in this  long renaissance were those between 1982 and 
1987, during which D Elias built up a network of contacts along the  Camino who 
became the founders of new associations of Amigos. He  also persuaded 
municipal authorities that reclaiming the route, preserving  its ancient buildings, 
and providing  shelter for pilgrims were tasks they should properly assume. And 
so  both conscience and consciousness were awakened. As a priest D Elias 
could  emphasise the Christian obligation inherent in the figure of the pilgrim,  
while making understood the value of a heritage hitherto taken for  granted. 
It was slow work, but ultimately successful. It all helped to create the 
minimal, but promising  network of practical support that I and nearly 1000 other 
pilgrims  found when we made our respective journeys during 1986. 

The Spanish Federation 

The  fledgling associations of Amigos came together in 1985 to form what I 
will  call for short, since it has a very long name, “the Spanish Federation”.  

D Elias was elected its first co-ordinator, and quickly set in  motion two 
far-reaching projects. 

The first was a modest  periodical - the Boletín del Camino - which was to be 
the forerunner of  the present-day Peregrino magazine. 

The second was an  international conference to address issues of common 
concern such as route  maintenance, refugios, the pilgrim  passport or credencial, 
and collaboration between the associations  and the Federation. 

This conference was held in Jaca in September  1987 and was the first of a 
series of triennial conferences that continues  today...You would perhaps be 
surprised at how lengthy and convoluted were  the debates on some of these 
matters, and how difficult it sometimes was  to achieve a concerted approach as 
opposed to a variety of local ones.  None the less, such discussion laid the 
necessary groundwork for the comprehensive support  structure that pilgrims enjoy 
today. 

Jaca Conference, 1987 

The Jaca  conference was also a milestone in that it was the first forum to 
which  the associations from outside Spain were invited. There were by now a  
number of them, in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and  Holland, 
all founded between 1982 and 1987. In October 1987, a month after  Jaca and with 
Spain a recent member of the EEC, the Camino de Santiago was  designated the 
first European Cultural Itinerary by the Council of Europe.  This implied 
protection and promotion on a concerted basis, in partnership  with the 
governments of the regions through which the route passed. This  began gently but soon 
had a major impact, not least visually: the bright  blue-and-yellow signs and 
waymarks erected by the Council of Europe were  harbingers of change, 
initiating the era of the Camino-centred coach tour  and the guided walking holiday. 

Following the Jaca conference,  when D Angel Luis Barreda Ferrer took over as 
President of the Federation,  and into the 1990’s, there was a growing 
tension between the assocations  of Amigos and the various interest groups seeking 
to make economic capital  out of the Camino. This was not at all an easy 
balance to maintain, and by  1991, the year in which the statistical barrier of 
10,000 pilgrims was  broken, there were many who believed that both the physical 
integrity of  the route and what I will call, for want of a better term, “the 
pilgrim  experience” were being compromised by excessive promotion, especially 
in  Galicia. 

There were complaints about sections of the route being  gravelled or paved 
over, or even eradicated altogether as roads were  widened to take more 
traffic. There was praise for the waymarking of  secondary routes that in places 
provided safe alternatives to the roads,  for the creation of new refugios and the 
planting of trees. Since the Holy Year 1993, when nearly 100,000  pilgrims on 
foot, bicycle and horseback received the compostela, the  Federation has 
taken a more proactive role in working with regional  governments and, especially, 
since 1998 under its current President,  Fernando Imaz, with the cathedral in 
Santiago.  ...
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Mas caminos, menos compostelas-Angel,  peregrino  









Mas caminos, menos compostelas-Angel,  peregrino  




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