How a centuries-old symbol found new life
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| A shell marks the way. |
Symbols can express culture and shared identity. On our Blocktober walk on the Camino in Spain, one appeared everywhere: the scallop shell. It guided us, but we also saw it on gates, furniture, clothing and in churches.
Symbols have accompanied Blocktober too. Its imagery has changed over the years, but its message of solidarity has remained. An artwork associated with the Saartjie Baartman Centre shows a woman’s profile becoming a tree, with colourful leaves and words of resilience along its branches. In Santiago we encountered an image that echoed this woman-and-tree motif — a reminder that symbols can connect different stories of hardship and hope.
Returning to the scallop shell, medieval pilgrims acquired one on reaching Santiago and wore it home as a sign that they had completed their pilgrimage. The shell makers’ guild, one of Santiago’s oldest, produced and sold shells made from various materials under strict church supervision.
Why the scallop shell? Scallops were plentiful along Galicia’s Atlantic coast, beyond Santiago. Pilgrims who continued to the sea could collect a shell as tangible proof that they had reached the coast; others obtained theirs in Santiago itself. The shell’s many ridges converge at one point, symbolising the different pilgrimage routes leading to Santiago. Medieval religious writers also saw the shell as an open hand, symbolising good deeds.
The shell’s role has changed, and today it may hang from a backpack before the first step. It may also have served as a scoop or drinking vessel, with some now likening it to a pilgrim’s ‘Swiss Army knife’. It is an appealing image: a sacred journey still requires something to drink from.
How the Camino began
The Camino reaches back some 1,200 years, yet much of the experience we enjoyed has been revived within our own lifetimes. According to the traditiojnal account, in the early ninth century Paio, a man who lived alone in prayer, saw mysterious lights in a Galician woodland. He alerted Bishop Teodomiro, who identified a tomb as that of the Apostle James, one of Jesus Christ’s twelve disciples. King Alfonso II of Asturias travelled from Oviedo to the shrine, was convinced that it was indeed James’ tomb and built a church there. His journey became the founding story of the Camino Primitivo, the route we walked.
In telling the story of the Camino’s origins, attention often centres on the Church and monarchy — the bishop who identified the tomb and the king who built the church. Yet, according to tradition, it was Paio who first noticed the mysterious lights and alerted the bishop. How often does history celebrate those in power while overlooking the ordinary people who set events in motion?
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| Paio looking at the light. |
Over the following centuries, paths from across Europe converged on Santiago. From the eleventh century, the Camino Francés (the French Way, across northern Spain to Santiago) became the principal route. Santiago itself became one of Western Christianity’s great pilgrimage destinations, alongside Rome and Jerusalem. Pilgrims travelled in search of forgiveness, healing or fulfilment of a vow. Churches, bridges and places of refuge grew around their needs. The old pilgrim ‘hospitales’ were places of hospitality, offering shelter, food and sometimes basic care. Those ruins on the mountain ridges belonged to an organised network sustained by patrons and communities.
On the exposed Hospitales ridge in Asturias, we walked past the remains of medieval pilgrim shelters. Their walls are broken now, and the wind moves freely through the stones. Long before yellow arrows and accommodation apps, people had organised places of refuge on this demanding route. How had that ancient journey become something we could still undertake today?
People behind the revival
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| New arrow over the old one. |
The Camino’s fortunes rose and fell. Wars, religious conflict and restrictions on travel reduced pilgrimage, with later periods of recovery. Santiago remained a place of pilgrimage and devotion to St James, but the international tradition of travelling long distances there on foot became much less prominent.
The revival reached across borders. France’s Friends of Saint James association, founded in 1950, helped renew interest in the pilgrimage and its history. Associations in Spain, researchers, local volunteers and church communities helped recover routes and welcome walkers.
One contribution was wonderfully simple. In 1984, Elías Valiña, a parish priest, began marking the Camino Francés with yellow arrows, helped by fellow enthusiasts. His work included clearing and recovering lost stretches of the route. Every day we trusted arrows on walls, roads and stones.
In Arzúa we saw a striking mural of Antón Pombo, a historian and pilgrim who met Valiña in 1984 and went on to help research and promote the routes. Seeing a contributor to the revival honoured so visibly gave that history a human face.
Public action also changed the scale of the revival. The Council of Europe recognised the Camino as its first Cultural Route in 1987, and UNESCO later gave parts of the Camino World Heritage status. Galician authorities promoted the 1993 Holy Year and began establishing a network of public pilgrim hostels, helping to turn renewed interest into a practical walking experience.
A pilgrimage in numbers
The numbers show how dramatic that revival has been. In the year 1984, just 423 pilgrims were recorded as receiving the Compostela, the certificate of completed pilgrimage. In 1992 there were 9 764; in 1993, a Catholic Holy Year in Santiago, the figure jumped to 99 436 — roughly a tenfold increase in a year. The annual total reached 530 987 in 2025. These figures count completions registered in Santiago; they exclude people who walk sections of a Camino or finish without registering. Only about one in twenty registered pilgrims in 2025 travelled the Camino Primitivo, the route we followed.
The medieval comparison is striking, but less certain. Som estimates put annual arrivals at the Camino’s height in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries at 200 000 to 500 000.
If the upper estimate of half a million were right, it would be equivalent to roughly one arrival for every 150–200 Europeans around the year 1300. Set against Europe’s population today, the 2025 total amounts to about one for every 1 400 people. That is a comparison of scale, rather than a measured participation rate: the medieval figures are uncertain, and today’s pilgrims come from across the world.
What we carry home
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| Our shells reach Santiago. |
As we described in Camino Blocktober: The Complete Journey, people walk for many reasons: faith, healing, freedom, companionship, time to think or simply to find meaning in their lives. Walking a centuries-old path made reflection and human connection tangible for us. The remains of those mountain shelters offer a reminder worth carrying home to Blocktober: solidarity becomes real through practical acts of care, encouragement and support, one day at a time.
More from Camino Blocktober
Explore other parts of our journey:
Also read: More Steps for Saartjie blogs — other Blocktober experiences, voices and ways to get involved.
Please donate to support survivors
Support the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children through the Blocktober fundraising campaign.
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