From arson to lettuce theft – wrong pilgrims on El Camino

This fire is just one in a litany of accusations against the upsurge in tourists participating in the Camino de Santiago over recent years. One resident of Bertola, a village where everyone grows their own crops, has woken up the next day to find walkers have made off with his lettuces.

Others complain of tourists using their gardens as toilets. A local woman in Galicia complains of a case with one so-called ‘pilgrim’ who jumped her garden fence during a family barbecue, stripped naked and jumped in her swimming pool.

The Camino has changed, lost its meaning

St. James’s Way, or ‘El Camino’ as most call it, attracted 440,000 people in 2023, up from an estimated 54,000 in 2020. Overtourism has led to a ‘change of meaning’ for the Camino that attracts new types 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 broken the Camino.’.