The Priestly Vision that Revived the Camino

The yellow arrows that guide pilgrims along the various routes to Santiago de Compostela offer great psychological comfort. I can attest to their soothing helpfulness as they repeatedly assured me that I was on the correct path. The arrows, and their counterpart the scallop shell, are the two most recognized symbols of the pilgrimage. But while the scallop shell has been around since medieval times, the yellow arrow is a recent invention. And yet, in spite of its newness, the arrow is often credited for the Camino’s renaissance.

 A "Palloza," one of the ancient homes of Celtic origins in O Cebreiro.

To employ the arrow as a guide for pilgrims was the brainchild of Don Elías Valiñas Sampedro. As parish priest of O Cebreiro, he devoted his life to resurrecting interest in the Camino. Don Elías was born in 1929, in the town of Sarria—a two-day walk from O Cebreiro. Immediately after his ordination, at the age of 30, he was assigned to the mountain-top village. At the time, O Cebreiro, once an integral part of the Camino, had virtually become a ghost town. The few families that still lived there faced harsh conditions. Don Elías’s first act was to lobby the Spanish government to bring running water and electricity to all the homes. After succeeding in this, he raised funds to renovate abandoned buildings, including the church of Santa María la Real.

 Santa María la Real in O Cebreiro

During his efforts to improve the lives of his parishioners, the priest became a keen student of the history of the Camino and the pivotal role O Cebreiro had played from the onset. The more he learned, the more fascinated he became with the subject. His passion led him to earn a doctorate from the Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca. The topic of his dissertation was the legal history of the ancient pilgrimage route.

It’s not surprising, then, that Don Elías thought that it was possible, as well as vital, to revive interest in the Camino. He firmly believed that people who made the pilgrimage in this day and age would reconnect with their spiritual selves, and as a result experience a conversion of the heart.

To revive interest in the Camino became Don Elías’s personal crusade. He spent countless days retracing the Camino, starting near the French border in Roncesvalles. It took him years to identify and clear the paths that had been lost to the centuries. He wrote the first modern guidebook for pilgrims. He visited every town along the way to try to persuade the leaders to join his cause. Because his dedication and passion were so intense, he often was called “El Cura Loco” behind his back—the crazy priest. Eventually, though, as the ranks of converts grew, his nickname became “El Cura de O Cebreiro”—a moniker he treasured.

Yellow arrows near Pamplona, Navarra. 

In 1984, Don Elías came up with the idea of painting yellow arrows along the entire route, starting on the French border and ending in Santiago de Compostela. Witnesses attest that it was a common sight to see him in his Citroën GS, accompanied by students armed with paint brushes and buckets of yellow paint. The rest, as the cliché says, is history.

In 1972, the year Don Elías began to dream about long lines of pilgrims walking the Camino, only 6 persons completed the journey. In 1985, the year after he and his helpers had marked the entire trail with yellow arrows, 690 walked to Santiago de Compostela.  This year, 2015, more than 250,000 pilgrims will receive a Compostela, the certificate that proves that the bearer has completed the pilgrimage.

There is an anecdote about Don Elías Valiñas Sampedro, who died in 1989, that those who knew him like to tell. Although it’s not certain the incident really happened, it fits perfectly with the mystic of “El Cura de O Cebreiro.” The tale goes that when he started painting yellow arrows in Navarra, close to the French border, Spanish police approached him, suspecting he may be involved in a Basque separatist plot. When they asked Father Valiñas what he was doing, he smiled and answered, “I am organizing a huge invasion.”

Monument to Don Elías Valiñas Sampedro in O Cebreiro, Galicia. 

We should all be blessed with such accurate visions and yellow arrows to guide us throughout life.

The Camino’s Most Enthusiastic Ambassador

Paulo Coelho has shared in many interviews that until he became a writer his life had been aimless. As an adolescent, his parents committed him three times to mental institutions, hoping to squelch what they considered his pointless rebelliousness. After he told his mother that his dream was to become a writer, she forbade him from following this path, telling him that it would be impossible to earn a living in their native Brazil. To please his parents, Coelho enrolled in law school, but he soon dropped out to live a hippie life devoted to “sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll.” After travelling throughout South America, he returned to Brazil and became a lyricist for musicians who were protesting the country’s military dictatorship. Because of this, Coelho was jailed three times and treated harshly, including being subjected to torture.

At the age of 39, already established as a successful lyricist, but still feeling unfulfilled, Paulo Coelho decided to walk the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. To this day, he claims the experience was the turning point of his life.

“The Camino,” Coelho says in the 2006 Norwegian documentary Paulo Coelho on the Road to Santiago de Compostela, “helped shaped the way I see myself, the way I see others, and the way I see the world.”

The bridge of Puente la Reina

Coelho started his pilgrimage in Puente la Reina, Navarra. By the time he reached O’Cebreiro in Galicia, he had decided it was essential for him to follow his long held dream of being a writer. “I knew then that although I was nearly 40 years old, I had to either take the first step, or forget my dream entirely,” he stated in a 2014 NPR interview.

As soon as Coelho returned home, inspired by his experiences along the Camino, he wrote O Diário de um Mago, his first novel, which has been translated into English as The Pilgrimage. He then wrote The Alchemist and has since gone on to become one of the most successful authors of recent times. Coelho has sold over 100 million books and in the process he has become the world’s most widely translated living author.

Refugio Acacio y Orietta proudly advertises its relationship with Coelho

Throughout the years, Paulo Coelho has never forgotten his debt to the Camino de Santiago. At present, he helps sponsor the Albergue Acacio y Orietta, in Viloria de Rioja, in the province of Burgos, and he maintains supportive relationships with other establishments that provide low cost housing for pilgrims.

But the most important role Coelho has assumed is that of unofficial ambassador of the Camino. Media from all over the world call on him to discuss the significance of undertaking the pilgrimage. Coelho has appeared in countless interviews and documentaries describing the rewards he received from walking the Camino.

The medieval village of O Cebreiro, a place of much significance to Coelho

Ironically, a recent admission of Coelho’s sent a small shock wave among Camino fans. Two years ago, he admitted to La Estrella de Galicia that he did not complete the journey to Santiago de Compostela. In his pilgrimage, he stopped walking in O Cebreiro.

“That’s where the Camino gave me what I needed. From there I hopped on a bus to Santiago de Compostela and visited the cathedral to give my thanks to Saint James.”

In Coelho’s defense, he made the pilgrimage before it became popular. In 1986, only 1,800 pilgrims completed the journey. In comparison, by the conclusion of this year, more than 250,000 pilgrims will have walked all the way to Santiago de Compostela.  

But Paulo Coelho’s devotion to the Camino de Santiago can never be questioned. In his will, he has given instructions for his ashes to be interred in O Cebreiro, the village along the Camino de Santiago where he found the courage to follow his lifelong dream of becoming a writer.