Pilgrims behaving badly set Spanish hillside ablaze and steal lettuce

Pope Benedict XVI once described the ancient pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago as a spiritual embodiment of the old continent’s rich culture, art and hospitality.
In recent years, however, residents living along the path have bemoaned its descent into a playground for unholy tourists — culminating this week in one hapless visitor being arrested for setting the hillside ablaze.
“For a few years now there has been an increasingly massive pilgrimage arriving, who believe that this is Ibiza or Marbella,” said Arantxa Madrazo, who lives in Vilaboa, a town on the Camino.
Her complaints come as one Camino de Santiago pilgrim was taken into police custody on Tuesday for starting one of the summer’s largest wildfires in northern Spain.
It is not known which country the 33-year-old suspect comes from but it has been confirmed he is not Spanish. He was arrested in Foncebadon, in the province of Leon, about 12 miles from the seat of the blaze, after it reduced 800 hectares of forest and grass to ashes and confined dozens of residents to their homes.
“Once the fire started, he continued his walk,” according to the Civil Guard, which was able to catch up with the alleged perpetrator “thanks to citizen collaboration”.
The fire is the latest example of pilgrims behaving badly on their journey towards Santiago de Compostela, a phenomenon that is on the rise. One resident said: “They consider themselves the masters of everything they see. Here in Bertola we all cultivate [crops], and it is common to go to bed with lettuce ready to pick and not find it the next day.”
Locals complain that pilgrims use their gardens as toilets. “When we ask them to find another place, they get in our faces. They always tell us the same thing, ‘I am a pilgrim and I can do it,’” she told the Diario de Pontevedra newspaper.
The network of pilgrimages leading to a shrine of the apostle James in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia attracted more than 440,000 people in 2023, up from an estimated 54,000 in 2020.
“Since the Covid lockdown this has become massive. They gave it too much hype and at all times from Easter onwards it’s crazy,” said Víctor Barral, a resident of Ponte Sampaio.
Madrazo said she has modified her behaviour from “opening the door and leaving bottles of water for people to cool off as they pass by the house” to investing thousands of euros in fencing off her property. She said “for years we have been bunkering down to avoid all contact” with many of the large groups that pass by.
Earlier this month she filed a complaint to police after a family barbecue was interrupted by a group she estimated to be in their thirties. “One dared to enter the estate and jump naked into the swimming pool while being filmed,” she said.
A common observation is the changing profile of pilgrims, from those driven by spiritual motives to those simply treating the Camino as a holiday.
Overtourism has led to a “change of meaning” for the Camino that attracts new profiles of pilgrims, according to José de la Riera, of the International Fraternity of the Camino de Santiago.
“What used to be an intimate thing has been transformed,” he said. “The arrival of leisure culture has burst the Camino.”