“If we take good care of the pilgrim, he will return to La Rioja as a tourist” | Radio Rioja

“It is a very special day but a little sad on the issue of the pandemic since we can’t do everything we would like“, recognizes the president of the Riojan Association of the Camino de Santiago, Juan Cruz Cabrito, but even so it is a very special day because it is also a holy year because this Santiago day falls on Sunday.

Even so, with limitations and with all the security measures, they encourage, together with the Logroño City Council, to take a symbolic walk through the city, to walk the stage of the Jacobean Route that runs through Logroño. “It is about making known the section of the road that runs through Logroño. We started at the Fielato at half past nine in the morning, in groups, walking the road to Santiago by Logroño, seeing the main monuments and arriving at the Arch.

Each person who participates in the tour will receive a duly completed credential, “in case one day they dare to do the Camino de Santiago”, Cabrito tells us before acknowledging that for him, “the road is everything.”

“We are one of the leading cities on the Camino de Santiago. The luck we have is that the road passes through our house and we are delighted to serve the pilgrim, which is one of the main missions of the association “, he highlights.

In fact, this association has been managing for 25 years the pilgrims hostel of Logroño. “Unfortunately this year they are passing very little“, remarks Juan Cruz, hoping that the extension of the jubilee year to 2022 will make it” a normal year. “

“I think this is pandemic will serve to return the path to its being “says Cabrito. “We are not against tourism, but it has other values ​​and we are seeing that the pilgrim who comes is a pilgrim pilgrim. We have a mission, if we take good care of the pilgrim, the pilgrim will return as a tourist. You have to treat the pilgrim very well because he will return to the city. They have checked it many times.

“I don’t know what it has this route, I did my first path in year 99 and I was so hooked that here I am. Every year I do a procedure, because I do not have 32 days to go through it all but we know that it hooks because many people who are coming have already done it other times “.

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