Camino Torres and the Pilgrim Office in Santiago

[David Tallan]

I went to pre-register for my Compostela and Distance Certificate and wasn't sure what to do.

Camino Torres wasn't listed so I went to "Otros Caninos" but Salamanca or its region were not listed among the options.

What has other people's experience been?

 

[pelerine]

When I walked the Torres in 2017 the person who handled my compostela did not know about it, but found it on their map and one of his colleagues had heard about it. Now since it joins the central Portuguese in Ponte de Lima maybe they just accepted the Portuguese last 100 km and not the coinciding of the Torres. I cannot look at my compostela now - don’t know which camino is mentioned. Surely not all of them if you have walked a whole string of them.

Probably their online system has not been updated for this.

Any of the forum members who regularly volunteer in the Pilgrims Office can find out?

 

[RodlaRob]

I have posted on the Forum before copy of my 2016 Camino Torres compostela, as this topic has arisen before.

 

[Kathor1]

@David Tallan, there is an earlier thread about this topic:
- https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/compostela-for-camino-de-torres.73201/post-997288

It has a photo of a Distance Certificate with "Camino Torres" on it. Compostelas as such don't mention any specific Caminos so what you indicate in the online registration form is merely for the statistics.

The Distance Certificate shown in the thread is filled in by hand so this was done some time ago because nowadays Compostela and Distance Certificate are printed with name, date and other details filled in by the printer/computer system.

I think that nowadays you just enter something suitable in the online registration form and then let the staff at the desk know that you walked the Camino Torres and they can adjust things.

It was interesting to see that new Caminos have been added to the online registration that I had not seen before, for example a "Camino de los Américas" with starting points like Cathedral Basilica of St Augustine or Mickler's Landing and a few other starting points with names I had not even been aware of. But, as you observed, no Camino Torres.

 

[RodlaRob]

Yes, @Kathor1 it was obviously hand written in 2016!
Computer now says "there is no Camino Torres".
Hopefully Computer in the Pilgrims office will be more compassionate about this Camino
soon

 

[Camino Chrissy]

This past spring 2024, I walked a majority of the Sanabres starting in Rionegro del Puente. My computerized distance certificate only shows I walked 107 km from Ourense, but indeed I walked another 174 km, totaling 281km. After I'd left the Pilgrim office and noticed it, I figured they only use easy to track "normal" starting points, especially since they have gone to the computer system. It doesn't really matter to me, but my original hand written distance certificate from 2017 shows I walked every step from SJPdP. They say I walked "exactly" 799 km.

 

[granpiscator]

At the Pilgrim’s Office, they issue two documents that shouldn’t be confused: the Compostela (the traditional/historical and free document) and the "Distance Certificate" (introduced in 2014, for which you need to pay 3 euros).

The Camino you took isn’t specified on the Compostela. If you’ve walked more than 100 kilometers, they’ll give it to you without any issues, because most likely, during the last 100 kilometers, you would’ve joined one of the routes officially recognized by the Cathedral of Santiago—like the Geira in your case.

On the other hand, the "Distance Certificate" (which is what you need to fill out the form for) is digitized, and they won’t list "Camino Torres," because according to their rules, it "certifies the number of kilometers traveled along one of the routes officially recognized by the S.A.M.I. Cathedral of Santiago." However, if you insist in person, they might write down that you started in Salamanca and calculate the distance accordingly, as if you’d taken the Vía de la Plata (as happened to @Denmanmurphy) . I’m not sure if now, with everything being digitized, they’d be able to leave the route name blank and have someone from the Pilgrim’s Office kindly write “Camino Torres” by hand.

On the forum, you can find tons of threads about the “Distance Certificate” issue and how they calculate the kilometers, especially for routes not officially recognized by the Cathedral of Santiago (like Torres, Madrid, Lana, Levante, or the Interior/Nascente Portuguese route, among others).

Unfortunately, for the same reason, there aren’t any official statistics for the Camino Torres either.

Personally, since it has nothing to do with history, I’ve never understood the appeal of the “Distance Certificate,” although we Spaniards do love to “certify” everything.

 

[David Tallan]

If someone walks from, say, Poland, and can document their route and the length, are they really going to limit the distance certificate to the last little bit (relatively) of their Camino along the routes that the office has in their database?

When I did the Madrid/Salvador/Primitivo, they wrote it as "Otros Caminos", but there was the option in the pre-registration to list my starting point as Madrid, and they took my word for the distance.

 

[David Tallan]

For what it is worth, this was my experience. The security guard entered me in the system as Otros Caminos, other parts of Portugal and said I could correct things with the volunteer at the desk.

The volunteer issued me with a Compostela and a Distance Certificate that listed the start place as Salamanca, the route as CGA and Otro Camino, and the distance as 630 km (391 Salamanca to Braga + 239 Braga to Santiago). I think that is the best that can be hoped for if Torres is not in their system. It accurately represents my Camino, even if it does not specifically name the Torres.