The Xacobeo Reacts to the Launch of a Donation-Based Hostel Network That Effectively Leaves Galicia Out
The Xacobeo has issued a forceful response to the launch of a donation-based hostel network that, in practice, leaves Galicia out of the equation. The organisation has set out its position on this initiative, which has a negative impact on the region’s participation in this hostel network.
The director of the Xacobeo, Ildefonso de la Campa, sent a letter to the website gronze.com setting out in detail his objections to the proposal to establish a network of hospitality hostels that, in practice, would leave Galicia out. Given the relevance of its content, we present it here for your consideration:
Dear friends of the Camino de Santiago,
As Director of Administration of the Sociedad de Gestión del Plan Xacobeo, the body of the Xunta de Galicia responsible, among other things, for maintaining and managing the route and the Xunta de Galicia’s network of hostels along the more than 1,500 kilometres of recognised Jacobean routes in our region, I must clarify our position on the resolution of 26 December from the Ministry of Culture on Traditional Hospitality. We share a certain unease with much of the Jacobean movement — I would point out to readers that the Spanish Federation of Associations and Friends of the Camino de Santiago has also filed objections against this resolution.
Because we believe it is not the result of an open, broad and inclusive debate among all the parties involved in protecting, managing, developing and promoting the Camino de Santiago. There has been no debate with the associations of friends of the Camino de Santiago that defend, promote and care for it, nor with the Autonomous Communities that manage it, nor with the universities that study and research it, nor with the confraternities that have tended to it for centuries, nor with the Catholic Church, from which it originates and which largely provides its spiritual custody, nor with the hundreds of hostels — of every kind — that attend to and care for pilgrims. No. A single organisation, the International Friendship of the Way of St. James, has drawn up a dossier, signed by a historian, that sets out the criterion of pointing to donation-based hostels alone as the sole bearers of the spirit of traditional Jacobean hospitality and welcome.
For many pilgrims, Jacobean scholars, administrations, residents of the towns the Camino de Santiago routes pass through, and the Church, Jacobean hospitality and welcome is much more than that. Hospitality is an individual and/or collective response to the whole range of a pilgrim’s needs as they pass through a territory. That whole range: physical, spiritual and life needs, attended to by people who recognise that walker as a pilgrim. Saying Buen Camino to a pilgrim is a basic act of welcome. There are hundreds of daily actions by people from Navarre, La Rioja, Aragon, Castile and Leon, Asturias, Galicia or any other region of our country in support of pilgrims — they take them into their homes, encourage them, share their food, give them information, accompany them and look after their safety. The Church continues to attend to pilgrims, voluntarily and free of charge; the confraternities continue running hostels and looking after pilgrims. The regional administrations continue to exercise our — centuries-old — powers to protect the route and the pilgrim and to maintain a network of accommodation specifically for pilgrims, and the associations give voice to pilgrims collectively and provide essential services for their wellbeing.
None of these voices were heard during the process of drafting this resolution. We do not consider this appropriate, we do not consider it participatory, and we believe this is precisely how things should not be done.
Secondly, and with deep respect and sympathy for all the donation-based hostels in Spain, we must clarify some ideas set out in this resolution from the Ministry of Culture, the result of the file drawn up by the FICS. We believe it is historically risky to link donation-based hostels with the traditional system of Jacobean hospitality and welcome. In the first place, that system rested on three pillars: the Church, through its monasteries, hospitals and resources; the political power that made up the Hispano-Christian kingdoms, with their network of royal hospitals and the municipalities that served pilgrims; and the confraternities — civic-religious organisations — which also assisted pilgrims. The donation-based hostels that emerged from the second half of the 20th century onward are the modern-day expression of the interest of a part of civil society working in the Jacobean field to attend to pilgrims’ needs. There is no single model of donation-based hostel, nor a single form of expressing welcome and hospitality in these hostels. They are important, without doubt. But are they the only expression of Hospitality and Welcome? I believe they are by no means. We continue to maintain forms of hospitable care and welcome that are more deeply rooted in Jacobean tradition than donation-based hostels.
Thirdly, the FICS file directly links traditional Jacobean welcome to two concepts: being free of charge and being run by volunteers. It must be said: workers at the royal hospitals in the Middle Ages were paid a wage for their services, and it is not true that pilgrims made their way stage by stage with all the services provided to them based on being free of charge.
Lastly, we are surprised that the final part of the resolution is a compendium of public measures to guarantee the survival, promotion and dissemination of this network — yet to be created — of donation-based hostels: a white paper, a brand image, institutional backing — which we understand to mean financial — management optimisation, drafting of a hostel statute, a model bylaw, a training plan and a safeguarding plan. In other words, we would be moving from a network of donation-based hostels to another, semi-public network of hostels that receive public funds, which, in our view, strips away the meaning of everything stated earlier in this resolution.
In short, at the Xunta de Galicia we believe that on a Camino with twelve hundred years of history we must reflect and act calmly — this has not been done; in a democratic and participatory society we must listen to all parties — this has not been done; we must ground our reasoning in well-established historical facts — this has not been done; and, above all, we must uphold the principle that the Caminos de Santiago belong to everyone and are for everyone, a universal cultural legacy open to all humanity. This perspective, too, has not been reflected in this unfortunate resolution.
This is the unease we wish to express, nothing more. I am taking the opportunity to share the link to the page of the BOE (Spain’s Official State Gazette) with the Ministry of Culture’s resolution, so readers can consult the original:
https://boe.es/boe/dias/2024/01/04/pdfs/BOE-A-2024-264.pdf
Buen Camino.
Ildefonso de la Campa Montenegro
Director of Administration and Relations with the Associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago.
President of the European Federation of Saint James Way, operator for the Council of Europe of the first European Cultural Route.
