The rising of pilgrims in The Winter Way: an alternative to consider?

Las Médulas

The Winter Way is still is very far from reaching the numbers of pilgrims that some more popular routes move, such as the massive French Way, the Northern Way or the Portuguese Way. But considering that the Winter Way just released officialdom within the recognized routes for the Xunta de Galicia, the first figures collected during this summer are encouraging. 152 people sealed their compostela at Pilgrim Office of Santiago Cathedral this summer and reported that they had walked the Winter Way; data that can only be compared to those of 2015, the first year in which they began to collect data specifically from pilgrims who took this route.

To understand the evolution that is taking the Winter Way in recent years we have to dip into the starting places that travelers indicated in the Pilgrim Office upon arrival in Santiago, which is good to know other many ways of them partly they took this route. If we compare with data from July and August 2015, only 31 pilgrims said they had begun in Chantada, Quiroga or Monforte their way, while this year were 86 pilgrims who have come out of those same towns, which is a significant increase of pilgrims who chose the Winter Way as their route.

Which are the reasons of the rise of the Winter Way? Obviously the officialdom from last August has meant is assuming a great diffusion of this route, which is an alternative in Galicia to the French Way. With the officialdom of the route is expected that Winter Way will flourish even more, reaching at least a level of equality with the authorities than the other recognized routes. The route should soon receive signaling plan to establish an official track, which should still encourage more pilgrims to venture into this alternative to the French Way; however much remains to be done in terms of number of accommodations and services available for pilgrims.