Brief history of the Camino de Santiago
No website about the Camino is complete without the history.
The Origins
In the early 9th century, around 820–830 CE, a hermit named Paio (Pelayo) is said to have witnessed mysterious lights or a star guiding him to a burial site in Galicia. The remains were declared to be those of St. James the Apostle. This is the traditional account of the discovery, rather than something that can be independently verified.
King Alfonso II of Asturias is traditionally regarded as the first known pilgrim to visit the site. He travelled from Oviedo and ordered a small church to be built over the burial place. This was later replaced and expanded over the centuries, eventually becoming the magnificent Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. His journey established what is now known as the Camino Primitivo, generally considered the earliest recorded Camino route.
The First European Pilgrims
One of the earliest well-documented foreign pilgrims was Bishop Godescalc of Le Puy, who travelled to Santiago in 950–951. His pilgrimage was significant because it demonstrated that devotion to St. James was already extending beyond the Iberian Peninsula.
Travelling at a time when much of Europe was politically unstable, Godescalc made the journey with a substantial entourage of clergy and other companions from Aquitaine. We know about his pilgrimage because, on his return journey, he stopped at the Monastery of San Martín de Albelda in La Rioja. There he commissioned a monk named Gómez to copy a theological manuscript, ‘De Virginitate’. Gómez recorded the bishop’s visit and pilgrimage in the manuscript’s colophon. This is one of the earliest surviving written accounts of a named foreign pilgrim travelling to Santiago.
Godescalc’s journey is also closely associated with the development of the Via Podiensis, the route that begins in Le Puy-en-Velay. It became one of the four principal historic French routes leading towards the Pyrenees and remains a popular Camino today.
The Medieval Golden Age
During the 11th to 13th centuries, Santiago de Compostela rose to become one of the three great pilgrimage destinations in Western Christendom, alongside Rome and Jerusalem.
As the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain expanded southwards during the Reconquista, conditions for travel improved and the Camino Francés developed into the principal route from France into Spain.
Monasteries, pilgrim hospitals, bridges and towns flourished along the routes, providing shelter and support for the growing numbers of pilgrims. The 12th-century Codex Calixtinus became an important collection of texts about the pilgrimage. Its fifth book included descriptions of the principal French routes and what is often regarded as one of the earliest guidebooks for pilgrims travelling to Santiago.
The Camino attracted pilgrims from across Europe, reaching its medieval peak during this period.
The Decline
The medieval golden age gradually faded. Outbreaks of plague, political instability, European wars, the Protestant Reformation and changing religious and cultural attitudes all contributed to a decline in pilgrimage.
Although people continued to travel to Santiago, the numbers fell dramatically over the following centuries. By the mid-20th century, the pilgrimage tradition had become much less prominent, with only a relatively small number of pilgrims completing the journey each year.
The Modern Revival
In the 1980s, Spanish priest Elías Valiña Sampedro played an important role in reviving interest in the Camino. He helped restore and mark routes with the now-iconic yellow arrows and published guidebooks that made the pilgrimage more accessible to a new generation.
Recognition followed. The Camino Francés in Spain was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, followed by the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France in 1998 and additional routes in northern Spain in 2015.
The modern revival gathered momentum through growing interest in walking, cultural heritage and personal travel. Films such as The Way (2010) helped introduce the Camino to a much wider international audience.
In 2025, a record-breaking 530,987 pilgrims received Compostela certificates in Santiago. This represented an increase of approximately 6% over the previous year and marked the first time the annual total had exceeded half a million. International pilgrims accounted for approximately 57% of those receiving certificates, while Spanish nationals made up the remaining 43%.
These figures reflect the number of people who received a Compostela, rather than everyone who walked a Camino. Nevertheless, they illustrate just how far the pilgrimage has come from its modest beginnings more than a thousand years ago.