The Canadian Anne Carson, who walked the Camino de Santiago from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Compostela and then continued to Fisterra, was awarded this Thursday with the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature. That pilgrimage carried out in 1983 ended up becoming literature years later and left one of the most unique works written about the Camino.
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature this year has a very special connection with Santiago de Compostela.
The poet, essayist, translator and specialist in classical literature Anne Carson She has been recognized by the Swedish Academy for a career characterized by experimentation and her ability to combine classical tradition with new forms of contemporary writing.
But long before receiving the most important award in world literature, Carson had already been a pilgrim.
And that Camino left a deep mark on his work.
From the Pyrenees to Santiago… and then to Fisterra
In 1983, Anne Carson crossed the Pyrenees from France and began a long pilgrimage on foot that took her to Santiago de Compostela.
Their journey did not end in front of the Cathedral.
As many pilgrims still do today, he continued walking west until he reached Fisterra, taking the route beyond Compostela and to the Atlantic.
That experience would end up becoming a very particular text entitled "Types of water. The Camino de Santiago", constructed as a poetic pilgrimage diary.
It is not a step-by-step guide or a manual for preparing your backpack. Carson turned the Camino into literary material, mixing observations, thoughts, landscape, spirituality and that inner transformation that is difficult to explain that so many pilgrims recognize after walking for weeks.
The Camino turned into literature
The relationship between the Camino de Santiago and literature has centuries of history, but each author has told it in a different way.
In the case of Carson, the pilgrimage appears filtered through a deeply personal perspective. The physical journey is mixed with thoughts, memories and reflections, until the experience of walking becomes something that surpasses the simple movement between two places.
Decades after that pilgrimage, the woman who walked to Santiago is now at the top of world literature.
And that makes the news something especially attractive for the Jacobean universe.
A Nobel Prize winner also followed our arrows towards Santiago.
Anne Carson, Nobel Prize in Literature 2026
The Swedish Academy announced this October 8 the granting of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2026 to Anne Carson.
Born in Toronto in 1950, Carson has developed a work that is difficult to fit into a single genre. He has written poetry, essays, translation and hybrid texts in which classical culture, personal experience and a permanent search for new literary forms coexist.
The Academy has precisely highlighted the bold and inventive character of its production and its particular dialogue with the classical tradition.
Carson is a renowned specialist in the Greco-Latin world and has dedicated a good part of her academic and literary career to the study and reinterpretation of the classics.
Among his best-known works are titles such as “Autobiography of Red”, “The beauty of the husband”, “Nox” o “Sweet and bitter eros”.
Now, at 76 years old, he adds the Nobel Prize to a career that had already received numerous international recognitions.
A story that began walking more than forty years ago
When Anne Carson began her pilgrimage in 1983, the Camino de Santiago was completely different from today.
The huge network of hostels we know today did not exist, mobile applications were unimaginable and the international renaissance of the Camino was still beginning to build.
Walking from France to Compostela meant facing a much less prepared and frequented route.
Precisely for this reason, his testimony also has important historical value.
It is the look of a pilgrim who walked the Camino before the great Jacobean transformation of the following decades.
An experience that was saved for years and that would end up finding its own literary form.
Santiago is also part of the history of the Nobel Prize
For RTV Camino de Santiago, the news makes especially nice reading.
We often tell stories of writers who were inspired by the Camino, of historical figures who made a pilgrimage to Compostela or of travelers who left in writing what they found along the route.
Now we can add another extraordinary name to that long list.
Anne Carson, Nobel Prize in Literature 2026, was also a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago.
Path.
He arrived in Compostela.
He continued to Fisterra.
And later he turned that experience into literature.
When the Camino continues after arriving
Perhaps that is also one of the great peculiarities of the Camino.
One can physically finish a pilgrimage and discover many years later that it is still present.
Some come back.
Others change their lives.
Others write.
Anne Carson did the latter.
The experience that began following a path from France to Galicia ended up being part of a literary work that today is once again being looked at with attention from all over the world.
More than forty years after that pilgrimage, the Camino crosses paths with its history again.
This time there is no backpack or arrival to the Obradoiro.
There is a Nobel Prize.
But behind continues to be that pilgrim who one day decided to walk to Santiago and then continue towards the end of the world.
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature also carries, in some way, a small scallop shell.
