Dimensions of the Saint James’ Way Pilgrimage: Portuguese Socioeconomic Impacts

These days pilgrimage is seen as something that has more than a religious dimension. In fact, pilgrimage also currently links with cultural, environmental and tourist domains. As a consequence, the positive socioeconomic effects from the pilgrimage are relevant for the local communities which are visited along the routes travelled by pilgrims. In this way, the aim of this paper is to firstly analyse the context of the Way of St. James’ pilgrimage, in general, and subsequently the socioeconomic dimensions of the pilgrimage within the specific Portuguese framework. Data from the ‘Oficina del Peregrino’, Eurostat and Statistics Portugal were all taken into account, for the period 2004-2019, and were worked through statistical and econometric approaches, namely correlation matrices and time series regression methodologies. The results show that the St. James’ Way pilgrims are mostly male, travel on foot, have both religious and other motivations, are between 30 and 60 years of age, come from Spain and a great deal of them start from Sarria. Travelling via the French Way, a large number are from Madrid and Andalusia and are students, employees, self employed, retired, technicians and teachers. Finally, it was estimated that each pilgrim had, over the period 2004-2018, a positive impact of 717.680 euros on the real gross valued added in the Northern Portuguese region.