Religious Tourism: The Way to Santiago

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW
• The more removed the rites of pilgrimage become from their original purity,
the more likely is the growth of an avaricious priestly class and the rise of
superstitious practices.
These statements about the common features in pilgrimage have also evolved.
Nowadays, following all these statements depends on the quantity of faith or if the
people have a strong religious belief, or a weak religious believe. Personal reasons
also affect to follow all the common characteristics of pilgrims for all different
religions.
2.4 Pilgrims or tourists
Coleman (2004) explains how there is a clear difference between tourism and
pilgrimage. Tourism can be defined as a leisure activity while pilgrimage is more of
a sacred journey. However, for the tourism sector, pilgrims are treated as simple
tourists, because in their religious trips they have the same needs as non-devoted
pilgrims, and moreover, they can visit typical tourist places like museums, cafes or
shops, being the only difference the purpose of their visit.
Nowadays, pilgrimage has become an important source for the tourism world. In
general, this kind of tourism is linked to the thought of journeys to sacred sites,
including a strong religious motivation. This research has helped to see this kind of
tourism from a different angle and to understand that not all the people making
pilgrimages or visiting religious places are really following a spiritual motivation.
For this reason, a differentiation was tried to distinguish two different types of
religious tourism, as not everyone going on a pilgrimage has the same reason for it.
Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to clearly define the number of those who are
devoted pilgrims and those with a desire of travelling for leisure and to admire
beautiful buildings as unique art pieces, as for example, the ones visiting the
Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, unless a deep research is done. (Post et al,
1998)
David Mashhadigholam Rojo 12