Sightseeing.
Justice endorses the conditions to resume Imserso's trips in October
The tunos have returned to singing their hooligan tunes with an enthusiasm that has not been heard in the Obradoiro since the pandemic started. They receive the pilgrims who complete the
Camino de Santiago
. The unmistakable sound of the tuna is diluted at every moment in the shouting and chants of those who enter the square. On the corner with Rúa Franco, a reinforced police checkpoint exercises the discreet surveillance typical of any summer. But this is not a summer for so many.
Although the numbers of infections certify the persistence of the
fifth wave
of infections by the coronavirus, Santiago lives oblivious to these circumstances, as if he were on another planet. The city has recovered its usual traffic of visitors, after a year and a half that seemed endless. The reasons are disparate: it is the
Holy Year
and traveling the Camino de Santiago is spending a few days away from the crowds that register other destinations.
Doing the Camino is putting land through a possible contagion. You walk alone or in groups of cohabitants, although the data indicate that the Jacobean routes record an
increase in pilgrims on
a daily basis
. Unique paradox: a few days in search of solitude that lead to an avalanche of personnel, who take over a city where it is difficult to find accommodation and where you have to queue to have a bite to eat.
The flow of pilgrims and tourists arriving in Santiago de Compostela this August has experienced a constant increase since the end of the last state of alarm. In the first six months of the year, the Pilgrim's Office registered only 1,000 more pilgrims than in 2020. «It was devastating, we would open testimonially for a couple of hours and
until March, we sealed a little more than 90 credentials
, although then they began to increase little by little », They recall at the reception center for pilgrims where, since the beginning of August, they have stamped about
1,500
passports
a day
.
On the weekend of July 25, the feast of Santiago Apóstol, more than 2,000 travelers stamped their credentials each day.
Figures identical to those of 2019, the year before the pandemic
. So it is not difficult to venture that those that are sealed this August will be close to - or perhaps exceed - those of the same month of that year, when an
absolute record was
broken with 62,814 pilgrims. This Sunday, for example, 1,768 pilgrims stamped their credentials.
A walk - it is a saying, that these days you have to make your way through the crowd by dint of putting your elbows - along the Rúa do Francos, the main road of the old town of Santiago and an obligatory path for pilgrims to the Cathedral, is a tour of a universe of bars and restaurants that occupy one place and another as well. At its doors and inside, a clientele as eager to drink and eat, as its waiters and those responsible for demanding that it observe
security measures
that, from what you see, are more than difficult to comply with.
In the week of the Feast of the Apostle, the average occupancy of the city's hotel establishments was 80%.
In the old town the data was better.
“
The hotels in the central almond were 100% occupied, not a single bed was left
.
This level of occupancy is maintained throughout the month of August ”, says Thor Rodríguez, president of the Hospitality Association of Santiago de Compostela.
The number of walkers on the Jacobean route last July was 33,883 pilgrims, more than 1,000 people per day, according to the Pilgrim's Office.
This represents 65% of those who arrived in the same period of 2019. The data so far in August increase this percentage by 10 points.
In August 2019, 53,319 pilgrims came to Santiago.
Will they be exceeded this year?
In
Padrón
, an important Jacobean point where three Paths coincide - the Portuguese, the
Traslatio
, and the Original Way - the pilgrims' hostel shines the full poster from the early hours of each morning. “
The restrictions due to the pandemic have limited capacity to 30%
and in the Xunta's shelters we do not accept reservations by phone. You have to do them when you arrive ”, warns Neli, the hospitalera, while giving the last free bed to Isaac, an American from California. "Last year I had to suspend the trip and this, although with fear, I decided to come: the security measures make me feel safer," he acknowledges.
The implementation by the Xunta of an
anticovid insurance
has been a boost for pilgrims like Isaac to dare to take the Camino. "By accessing a shelter, this insurance
takes care of any expense and measure in the event of a pilgrim contagion, including medical expenses, quarantine and repatriation,
" says Luis Gutiérrez Perrino, president of the Spanish Federation of Associations of Friends of the Way from Santiago.
As in Compostela and in most of the towns through which the main branches of the Camino pass, in Padrón it is difficult to find accommodation despite the fact that this Galician town has 1,000 beds between hostels, hotels and rural accommodations.
"
Traveling the Jacobean route is a way of escaping for a few days from the crowds that other tourist areas register
," they point out from the Tourist Office.
Fear of the pandemic and celebration of the Holy Year.
The protective Apostle against the Covid, contemporary interpretation of
Santiago and closes Spain
that the Christian troops shouted in the Reconquest when they faced the Arabs.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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