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Want to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage? Leave your phone at home

Want to walk the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage? Leave your phone at home
GRAÑÓN, SPAIN - OCTOBER 23: The symbol of the Way of St. James, or El Camino de Santiago, a network of ancient pilgrim routes that stretch across Europe and converge at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Campostela in northwest Spain, stands on the side of a country road on October 23, 2020 outside Grañón, a village in the province of La Rioja, Spain. The Camino de Santiago is being affected by Covid-19 with strict restrictions regarding services and mobility along the routes. Starting October 30, 2020, Spanish authorities closed among others, the perimeter of Santiago de Compostela. Only pilgrims that have been journeying before October 30 can stop at the cathedral of Santiago de Campostela, but they are not allowed to stay overnight and have to transit through. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Getty Images)"n
Una Cunningham
By Una Cunningham
7 May 2025
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Retirement, relationship loss or major life decisions – your motives for making a pilgrimage affect your approach to technology.

Pilgrimage offers a chance to disengage from the everyday and think deeply about what is important. Leaving home and spending some time on the move with no concerns other than putting one foot in front of the other can be life-changing.

Pilgrimage has been described as a liminal experience, which means you are neither at home nor at your destination, caught between two existential levels. Many people return home feeling transformed.

Since the mid-1990s, the number of people walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route to what the faithful believe to be the tomb of Saint James the Apostle in northwestern Spain has rocketed. And they continue to rise, probably approaching the numbers who made the pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, when up to 2 million people are believed to have walked each year.

Medieval pilgrims prepared for pilgrimage by setting their financial and spiritual affairs in order: writing a will and going to confession. Pilgrimage was seen as a rite of passage, or an individual quest where social status and networks were traded for anonymity and poverty in constant mobility. Arrival conveyed salvation, or perhaps a cure or a mystical revelation.

Read more: Eight days hiking the Camino via Saint James, the French way

Contemporary, postsecular pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago is often undertaken at turning points in the pilgrim’s life, for psycho-existential motives.

Pilgrimage allows you to take time out from your life. Authenticity and simplicity are valued, and will show you that you actually need very little. Slow mobility facilitates introspection and may have transformative effects.

At the same time, you can prepare for a pilgrimage as for any other activity, using the digital tools at your fingertips to gather information from official apps and online communities, possibly to learn some Spanish, and to make decisions in the planning of the route, accommodation, equipment and training. It is possible to arrange everything in advance, but you risk becoming hyper-informed, losing the opportunities for discovery, wonder and surprise that are part of pilgrimage.

Pilgrims Giulia Borsci, 33, from Italy (right) and Victor Bezerra, 25, from Brazil, hold hands during their four months journey on foot from Italy, following the Way of St. James, or El Camino de Santiago, a network of ancient pilgrim routes that stretch across Europe and converge at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Campostela in northwest Spain, on November 24, 2020 close to Ligonde, Galicia, Spain. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Getty Images)


Technology during your pilgrimage


I research online Camino forums. They are divided on the use of technology (such as smartphones) while actually on pilgrimage.

Unbroken digital interaction with family and friends at home will thwart some of the goals of your journey. Instead of being fully in the moment, you will remain socially present in a symbolic world somewhere else, with all the worries of that world close at hand. You’ll also miss opportunities to trust your intuition and the community of pilgrims you meet on the Camino.

You don’t need a map. The trail is blazed with yellow arrows and stylised scallop shells. Without a phone, you can plan your next day’s walk using a guidebook and if you want to book a bed for the next day, the albergue (pilgrim hostel) staff can help.

The symbol of the Way of St. James, a network of ancient pilgrim routes across Europe and converge at the tomb of St. James in Santiago de Campostela, stands on the side of a country road on October 23, 2020 outside Grañón,Spain.  (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Getty Images)





Many see a Camino pilgrimage as an opportunity for a digital detox and attempt to at least regulate the amount of time spent with a smartphone. But even if you keep your phone in your backpack during the day and concentrate tech time to the evening, you will be interrupting the separation from your life at home that is necessary if your pilgrimage is to be a liminal experience. When you catch up on news, email and family, you step back into the everyday.

Read more: Part Two: What to prepare for an eight-day hike on the Camino de Santiago

Live blogging and vlogging from the Camino is encouraged by prospective pilgrims lurking in the Camino forums. Those who have already completed one or more Caminos comment to relate and vicariously relive their own Camino experiences. Live turn-by-turn reports are also appreciated by those undertaking a virtual pilgrimage.

After your return home, you can join the ranks of veterans who retell their pilgrimage to the online community and contribute with advice to prospective pilgrims. But doing this while on the Camino focuses your attention to other people and places rather than the here and now.

The liminal experience that was supposed to bring the pilgrim to insight does not always happen, due, at least partly, to digital distraction and incomplete extraction from the everyday environment.

In the words of Camino anthropologist Nancy Frey, use the Camino as a chance for disconnection. If you must take a phone, keep it turned off in your backpack – strictly for emergencies. DM 

This story was first published in The Conversation.  Una Cunningham is a Professor emerita in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Stockholm University.

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