Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the third of the holy cities of Christianity. The first one is Jerusalem, at least from the chronological point of view and for its direct link with the Saviour. The second one, Rome, is the final point of all ways. And Santiago, the third one.

Santiago owes its name to the Zebedee’s son, the apostle who according to tradition wanted his disciples to bring his body after his death to the end of the known world in a stone boat. Once disembarked in the lands of Queen Lupa, he was taken by powerful oxen to the place where they decided to stop and there stay forever the body of the Patron of Spain and Galicia.
Centuries go by and the hermit Pelagio is the one that discovers mysterious lights in the middle of the night, appearing in an isolated place… It is the tomb of St James, which will be an attention point of the known world in those dark middle Ages.
The King comes from Oviedo tracing the first of the ways to Compostela, the Primitive Way, going along the old Lucus Augusti of the monumental wall. And pilgrimages started and were supposed to last for thousands of years. Over a thousand ones have already passed and more and more pilgrims come this way.
Around the tomb, there is a small church that will be a cathedral later and will grow physically and spiritually as the Compostela that houses it changes from borough into town, from city into capital. With the University and Archbishopric and as the spiritual capital of the West, Compostela is also today the political and administrative capital in Galicia and the lighthouse that illuminates millions of pilgrims from the old Europe searching for the deepest roots of the catholic faith in the Iberian Peninsula.
Whether it is called Compostela for its perfection and beauty (from the Latin “compositum”) or it comes from the Campus Stellae (Field of Stars) where the tomb of St James appeared, the truth is that Santiago is the great city of Galicia. Faith wanted it and pilgrims chose it as a goal to the city that was at the end of the great way marked in the sky as the “Milky Way” since the beginning of times.
Welcome to Compostela, the city of the Apostle, the end of all ways to Santiago!

                                             J.G.R.