Camino de los Arrieros, Camino by Zas-Brandomil, Camino by O Courel... Galicia is full of false Caminos -there is even a Celtic Way that assures that there was a Jacobean route from the ports of the Costa da Morte!- without the minimum support historical, based only on the existence of hospitals for the poor and pilgrims (like all of Europe, without this indicating that they went to Santiago, of course) and churches dedicated to Santiago. The objective: to get money from the Xunta de Galicia to promote their areas and the construction of reception infrastructures. Or in other words, kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. Because in 2021, with all the problems of the pandemic, the Caminos de Santiago watered the Galician rural world with 70 million euros, as La Voz de Galicia published.
As an example of the above, the promoters of a tourist route that they call Camino del Mar in which the innumerable tourist attractions of all of A Mariña de Lugo and part of the A Coruña coast are presented without ever showing that supposed path, which it doesn't really exist. Perhaps the two seconds that at minute 8.59 capture the image of a path refer to that itinerary. They also do not show any pilgrim or Jacobean symbol, and the only one that appears is a signaling frame for another path, really very beautiful but that has nothing to do with the Jacobean one, which is that of San Andrés de Teixido, where "vai de morto que non vai de vivo”, as tradition says.
The Catholic Church deserves a special mention. Former Dean Segundo Pérez, now in charge of the Pilgrim's Office (whose rehabilitation cost around three million euros, paid for with taxes), gives the compostela to anyone who has walked a hundred kilometers and ended up in the cathedral of Santiago, something in which Xunta sources who ask not to be identified described it as "unfriendly, not because they do it but because they don't count on us at all."
