Celebrating 20 years of the 'modern' camino

[sillydoll]

If you are going to be in Santiago at the end of the month you can participate in the many programs arranged to celebrate 20 Years of the Camino as a European Cultural itinerary.
"In October 2007 it will be twenty years since a transcendental event for The Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago took place when it was declared the first European Cultural Route by Council of Europe in 1987. This Declaration meant the official confirmation of the Pilgrims’ Road as the great benchmark of European and pro-European cultural routes. On 23 October 1987, in the Praza do Obradoiro in Santiago de Compostela, the Council of Europe officially proclaimed the Road as the first Cultural Route in Europe. A granite plaque in the middle of the square commemorates this historic moment."

The Consellería de Innovación e Industria (the Department of Innovation and Industry of the Galician Regional Government) has therefore organised and promoted a series of events to commemorate that historic moment, with the collaboration of the European Institute of Cultural Routes, the Vice-presidencia da Xunta de Galicia (Vice-Presidency of the Regional Government of Government of Galicia) and the Concello de Santiago (Santiago City Council).

SATURDAY 20 OCTOBER
Official opening of the Streets of Compostela. Routes of Europe project Santiago de Compostela
12.30 Porta do Camiño.
Unveiling of the first street of the European Cultural Routes in Santiago de Compostela and the symbolic horizontal signage of the city’s streets as streets of the historical routes of Europe.

SUNDAY 21 OCTOBER
Round Table entitled The Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago. The first European Cultural Route.
Twenty years on - O Cebreiro (Pedrafita do Cebreiro)
A meeting point with institutional and civil representatives who in the 1980’s and the early 1990’s started to underline the importance of the route. This was when the Pilgrims’ Road came to the fore as a great tourist, cultural, spiritual and social proposal on an international level. The round table is being held in O Cebreiro as it is the most symbolic and best-known place of the Road in Galicia and the point from where Father Elías Valiña started the recovery of the route in the 1980’s.
09.30 Guest house of San Xiraldo de Aurillac. Official opening of the talk.
09.45 Guest house of San Xiraldo de Aurillac. Lecture by Michel Thomas-Penette, director of the European Institute of Cultural Routes. Title: The Council of Europe and the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago. 1987-2007
10.45 Guest house of San Xiraldo de Aurillac. Talk. First part. From the past – The Road twenty years on.
12.45 Round table. Second part. Towards the future. A European route: is the ideal still possible?

16.45 Church of Santa María A Real in O Cebreiro. Closing ceremony of the meeting including Homage to Elías Valiña.
Twenty years on. Presentation of the new corrected edition of the book entitled Elías Valiña, defender of the Pilgrims’ Road. 1959-1989, by journalist and writer Luís Celeiro, Vice-President of the Association of Journalists and Scholars of the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago (APECSA).
Official opening of the exhibition entitled Elías Valiña. The rebirth of the Pilgrims’ Road,organised by the Association of Friends of the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago in Galicia, with the collaboration of the parish priest of O Cebreiro and sponsored by the S.A. de Xestión do Plan Xacobeo (Management Office of the Xacobeo Program).
17.30 Church of Santa María A Real in O Cebreiro. Organ concert.

TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER
Institutional commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the Declaration of the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago as the first European Cultural Route and the presentation of the new Declaration of European Cultural Routes Santiago de Compostela
11.45 Praza da Quintana. Official opening of the exhibition entitled Europe and the Pilgrims’ Road, devoted to European Cultural Routes and the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago.
12.30 Praza do Obradoiro. Institutional commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the proclamation of the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago as the first European Cultural Route. The ceremony will conclude with the reading of the new official Declaration of the Cultural Routes of Europe.
Institutional interventions; The Mayor of Santiago de Compostela, the Vice-President of the Xunta de Galicia, the President of the Xunta de Galicia, representatives from the Council of Europe. Mediator: the Regional Minister for Innovation and Industry. Reading of the new Declaration of European Cultural Routes by young Europeans and children from Santiago de Compostela. (This Declaration is an up-dated version of the one presented in Compostela on 23 October 1987 dedicated to the Pilgrims’ Road to Santiago. It was drawn up to be officially presented in Santiago on 23 October 2007, as part of the 20th anniversary of the Council of Europe Cultural Routes. The Roads to Santiago congress, held in Le Puy-en-Velay (France). This was at the end of September of this year and was organised by the European Institute of Cultural Routes with the collaboration of the Communauté d’Agglomération of Le Puy-en-Velay).

The Centro Coreográfico Galego (IGAEM) will perform a brief allusive piece at the beginning and at the end of the ceremony.
21.00 Auditorio de Galicia. Concert for the European Cultural Routes by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia. (By invitation).

PROGRAMME FOR THE COMMEMORATIVE EVENTS

20 October 2007-26 October 2007

Dirección Xeral de Turismo Dirección Xeral de Xuventude e

Solidariedade

VICEPRESIDENCIA DA IGUALDADE E DO BENESTAR INSTITUT EUROPÉEN

DES ITINÉRAIRES CULTURELS

Organised and promoted by: With the collaboration of:

Technical Secretary of the Organization

Tel. + 34 981 555 920

Fax. + 34 981 564 978

e-mail: info@versalcomunicacion.com

 

[Peter Robins]

There's an article in Monday's Correo Gallego on the new biography of Elías Valiña, Elías Valiña, o valedor do Camiño (versions in Galician and Castilian). The article contains some photos of O Cebreiro from the 60s/70s.

 

[sillydoll]

Here is a bit of background of D Elias for those who do not read Spanish - or do not know who D Elias Valina is:

Every pilgrim who follows the yellow arrows along the Camino to Santiago can be grateful to one person – D Elias Valina Sampedro of O Cebreiro parish - a dedicated priest and scholar who devoted over 30 years of his life to the resurrection and promotion of the camino.
D Elias was appointed priest of the parish of Santa Maria La Real of O Cebreiro in 1959 when he was just 30 years old. He wrote: "When I arrived in O Cebreiro it was more a pile of rubble than a village, marked by the perpetual worry of destitution.."
Under his direction the church of St Mary’s as well as the ancient inn and pilgrim hospital, which he described as being “little more than a dunghill”, were restored and in 1972 O Cebreiro was declared a Historical Monument.
He concentrated all of his energies on the restoration and reanimation of the camino. In 1967 he wrote his doctoral thesis on - The Road of St James: A Historical and Legal Study. He directed the - Artistic Inventory of Lugo and its Province- six large volumes of an exhaustive description of all the monuments and items that could have any value
“In the 1970’s there survived only a remote memory of the Jacobean pilgrimage” he wrote. In 1971 he wrote the book ‘Caminos a Compostela’.
In 1974 Edwin Mullins published a book “The Pilgrimage to Santiago”. In it he recounts how it was for a pilgrim on foot in the early 1970’s:
“It was more often a question of dropping into village bars and enquiring politely where the old road might be.”
In 1972 only 6 pilgrims were awarded the Compostela.
D. Elias’s guide was published in 1982 and at a gathering in Santiago in 1985 he was entrusted with the co-ordination of all the resources for the camino. “Pilgrim Refugios” were established and he was the first to mark the way with yellow arrows with paint begged from the roads department.
Ten years later, in 1986, the Santiago Cathedral issued 2,491 certificates. In 1989, the year of the Pope’s visit (and sadly, also the year D Elias passed away) 5,760 compostelas were issued. You can see a bust of D. Elias in the churchyard at O Cebriero.
"One day, at the end of the afternoon, he found himself on a mountainside in the Pyrenees, walking a long section of the camino with the aim of finalising the cartographic details of his new guide. The descent, by way of a rugged hillside, was inevitable. His muscles were feeling the effects of going down the steep slope.. He took a moment's rest and for the few hundred meters that remained, turned around and walked backwards!" (CSJ Conference Proceedings 1991)

 

[Peter Robins]

why all the apostrophes? The name of the village is O Cebreiro - 'O' is the definite article in Galician = 'the'. There's no more apostrophe there than in El'Paso, La'Paz, Los'Angeles, Las'Vegas . . . or for that matter El'Camino O'Camiño

 

[Joseph Chan]

Thank you Sil for taking the time and trouble to translate and let us know of such generosity on the Camino, I am taken aback at the pedantic criticism of the use of apostrophes by the moderator. Also to let you know we are very grateful for all the knowledgeable input you have added to this practical forum.
Grandpa Joe

 

[sillydoll]

Thanks Joe.
Peter is quite right -my mistake. (Peter, I have now deleted all the offending little blighters! Lynn Truss would have had a field day with my post!)

 

[Peter Robins]

it's Lynne Truss

 

[sillydoll]

Thank you for the correction Petrus Beag Ó Robin.

 

[Peter Robins]

another thing the article clarifies is the question of why the arrows are yellow. I asked around the CSJ a while back whether there is any significance to the colour, or if there just happened to be pots of yellow paint lying around, but no-one seemed to know. It seems Don Elias scrounged some paint from the Highways Dept which just happened to be yellow.

 

[sillydoll]

he was the first to mark the way with yellow arrows with paint begged from the roads department.

Noone? “No one” is always two separate words, unlike “anyone” and “someone.” ...

 

[Peter Robins]

quiteright; hypheninserted