The thesis addresses modern pilgrimage practices connected with the Camino de Santiago route and the associated pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela. The city is situated in the northwest of modern-day Spain and became a pilgrimage center within the framework of the Roman Catholic religious tradition on account of the alleged discovery of the Apostle St. Jacob’s remains in the ninth century. The author focuses on the historical changes to which the pilgrimage route was subjected during the time of its existence. She points to the dichotomy between the pilgrimage route homogeneous representations from the point of view of the European identity policy that presents its heritage as one of the key identifiers of the modern European community and heterogeneous and dynamic pilgrimage experience at the local and individual levels. In the empirical part the author systematizes the modern pilgrimage process to the individual experiential phases in which the inner experience of the pilgrim is intertwined with the natural geographic characteristics of the landscape crossed by the pilgrimage route. The research reveals a diverse field of social relations among very different actors and their often conflicting motivations for engaging in the pilgrimage process, which, last but not least, leads us to rethinking the nature of contemporary pilgrimage.
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