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This study aims to identify pilgrims’ motivations to undertake the Camiño de Santiago and examine differences regarding socio demographics and other characteristics. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from pilgrims that had travelled the Camiño de Santiago . A total of 1140 valid responses was collected from 45 different nationalities. The results indicate that pilgrims are mostly motivated by spiritual aspects, by wanting new experiences and for the nature and sports experience. Interestingly, religious motivations are the least important. The study also found that motivations differ according to several factors such as gender, nationality and the way the pilgrims undertook their journey. The findings of this study offer a better understanding of modern pilgrims, providing useful insights to stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a reading of recent accounts of journeys on one of the great Christian pilgrimage routes, to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. It focuses on the common narrative strategy of a disrupted sense of time expressed by the pilgrim-authors, and argues that this trope is intrinsic to texts that suggest that time has been 'crossed' and that the author has undertaken a 'medieval' experience. It is argued that this trope of crossing time is closely linked to two central themes of contemporary Santiago texts: the construction of the author as an authentic pilgrim, and the experience of forms of community that are outside the norm in the pilgrim's everyday life. These common themes in Santiago pilgrim narratives are said to be reflective of the authors' distrust of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]