Article Who is Interested in Developing the Way of Saint James? The Pilgrimage from Faith to Tourism Rossella Moscarelli 1,*, Lucrezia Lopez 2 and Rubén Camilo Lois González 2 1 Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milano, Italy 2 Department of Geography, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain;
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[email protected] Received: 14 November 2019; Accepted: 27 December 2019; Published: 2 January 2020 Abstract: The Way of St. James in Spain is the main European pilgrimage route. Currently, it is a cultural, tourist, monumental, spiritual, and sports route. For this reason, the paper aims to discuss the concept of the “Polysemy of The Way”, by analysing how the new pilgrims’ motivations are creating an inclusive and complex space, which is making a shift from religious space to a multifaceted tourism reality. We study the characterisation and interaction of the new actors involved in its development, maintenance and promotion. As a result, its original “space of faith” is now a “live heritage space”, thanks to the rehabilitation of routes, monuments, and landscapes. The combination of these motivational and spatial transformations enhances the factors of post- secular pilgrimage, such as slow mobility, the liminality and the sense of community, which the same actors assume as priorities for territorial management. Keywords: The Way of St. James (Spain); spirituality; faith; tourism; pilgrimage; secular motivations; territorial “re-semanticisation”; heritage space 1. Introduction According to several authors (Cazaux 2011; Coleman and Eade 2004; Collins-Kreiner 2010a, 2010b; Eade and Sallnow 1991), pilgrimage is a complex and shifting phenomenon, with different implications at religious, political, social, and territorial levels.