that leave a mark
Pilgrims through Cantabria
At the beginning of the 1980s, Jaime Aja Pila, journalist and broadcaster for RTVE in Cantabria, contacted Valeriano Teja Oruña, a scholar and researcher of the Camino de Santiago in the north, to make a series of chapters focused on the sections in which the Camino de la Costa crosses this central community in northern Spain.
More than three decades of Camino
In 1986 Eugenio Gómez and Valeriano Teja make their first pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. It will be the beginning of a series of pilgrimages that will continue over time. Contact with the Camino and the pilgrims meant that in 1988 the two of them and other people decided to found the Association of Friends of the Caminos de Santiago through Cantabria, of which Valeriano Teja is appointed president.
Research work continues and deepens, which leads them to establish relationships with various institutions and organizations increasingly interested in promoting this itinerary. Historical rigor and the search for documents and vestiges that corroborate the transit of pilgrims through this land and these seas prevail. Joint studies are carried out with various historians, researchers and the chair of medieval history at the University of Cantabria. and in 1991 a joint work is presented, “The Jacobean routes through Cantabria”, prepared by Jaime Aja Pila, Juan Antonio Muñiz Castro and Valeriano Teja Oruña and commissioned by the University of Cantabria, the Government of Cantabria and the Social and Cultural Projects of Caja Cantabria.
At the end of that year, 1991, Valeriano Teja was appointed to defend in the II International Congress of Associations of Friends of the Camino, held at the Hotel Reconquista in Oviedo, the historicity of the Camino del Norte.
In 1995 The Association of Friends of the Caminos de Santiago of El Astillero contacts the Association of Friends of the Caminos de Santiago through Cantabria and from the union of both arises the Association of Friends of the Camino de Santiago de Astillero and Cantabria.
In 1999 the first one is edited Guide to the Caminos to Santiago through Cantabria by the Association of Friends of the Caminos de Santiago through Astillero and Cantabria carried out by members of this same association and in which Valeriano Teja Oruña collaborates.
With the disappearance due to the death of those responsible for the Camino de Santiago in Astillero and Cantabria and the closure of the Muslera Hostel, this association ceases its activity.
During the first decade of the 21st century, many works and studies have been carried out individually to achieve official recognition of this path. During the following years, it is the regional institutions that take the baton and demand before the corresponding organizations the comparison of this route with the French route and some other itineraries followed by pilgrims to reach Santiago.
In 2015 the UNESCO declares the northern Caminos de Santiago as World Heritage. As a result of this declaration, the members of the primitive Association of Friends of the Camino de Santiago through Cantabria feel the need to intensify their activity again and recover the associative sense of friends of the paths, dedicating their efforts to recovering the spirit of the path, and create the Association of Friends of the Paths of Northern Spain in Cantabria.
From 2018 The meeting of a platform for dialogue and collaboration between shelters, associations and social agents linked to the Camino de Santiago is promoted in Cantabria: the Cantabria Coordinator.
In 2021 The association becomes part of the Spanish Federation of Associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago (FEAACS) as the sole representative of Cantabria.
In 2022, in the assembly held in Potes, the association is integrated into the Northern Group, which brings together associations from the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia around the Northern Roads.
In 2023, Lebaniego Jubilee Year, the association modifies its name to expressly accommodate this itinerary, and begins to use «Pilgrims through Cantabria» to abbreviate a name that is already very long.
In 2024 We assume the responsibility of organizing the XXXVII FEAACS Assembly, which brought together delegates from more than 50 associations in Santander and Camargo. Months later, in its first ordinary assembly, we joined «Europe Compostela«, the first and largest European federation of friends of the Camino de Santiago.
