The Way of St. James and the city to which it leads are experiencing another year of tourist records that are evident in the old quarter of Compostela and in the main entrances. From there, almost every day, videos and photographs of uncivil behavior of pilgrims emerge: scandalous from the first hour with acclamations for Christ and singing at the top of their voices, painted on the stones of the cathedral or one of its emblematic squares and overnight stays at the foot of the temple. Almost at the end of August, one of the busiest months, a dozen informants began to tour the almond tree of Compostela with a sound meter and a tablet to try to stop the incivility and convince visitors that there are other points of interest in the Galician capital. This is a “benevolent” attempt by the City Council to reduce the saturation and discomfort of the inhabitants due to the tourist overflow.
“Let’s finish.” That’s the response that two of these informants, Patricia Parafita and Hugo Caamaño, receive from a group that advances a few meters from the cathedral, led by a man waving the Spanish flag. The two workers explained, during a meeting with the media this Wednesday, that this is a common reaction when they try to approach groups of pilgrims. The reaction changes when they approach travelers who come as couples. “They don’t tell us much, but that’s the work process,” Caamaño explains. Those who stop to listen to them, Parafita adds, tend to be grateful for the information – “many come to the old neighborhood and don’t know what else to do” – or apologize if they notice that they were making a bothersome noise.
The approach is to adopt a “friendly” attitude, they explain. They can only inform, not prohibit. They use tablets to show what other points of interest are in the city. They do not provide physical maps, but travelers can scan a QR code to access the information. And, most strikingly, they carry a sound meter and measure the decibels of singing or conversations in several voices. They have a table in which they show what the comfortable noise of a whisper is compared to the annoying noise of an ambulance or those that directly cause damage, such as that of a plane taking off. And, on this scale, they show the impact of the decibels of agitation. “At first it surprises them, but then they agree with us and even ask for forgiveness,” says Parafita, after six days of work.
The daily approach is that the five pairs, which rotate every three days, are distributed around the main entrances of the Camino de la Camino and move around the surrounding area to meet tourists, almost all of them pilgrims. They are present between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and their presence will last for another 39 days -45 in total-. “Some think we belong to an NGO or that we are trying to sell something,” explains Hugo Caamaño. Those who stop must answer a survey with five questions about their origin, type of trip, accommodation and length of stay. This data will be analyzed later to try to learn more about tourist flows in the city.
The informants are hired by an external company to which the Santiago City Council awarded the contract after a competition, explains Jorge Carregal, from Santiago Tourism. In the case of Parafita and Caamaño, both are trained in the sector: they are senior technicians in guiding, information and tourist assistance.
The City Council team insists that this initiative is part of a strategy to change a tourism model that, especially in high season, causes discomfort among the inhabitants of the Galician capital and has an impact on rental prices or on the closures of traditional businesses that have been registered in recent years in the old quarter. When presenting the proposal last week, the mayor, Goretti Sanmartín (BNG), said that his team was “concerned” about the negative effects of the increase in tourism and was looking for a “harmonious coexistence”. He also announced that changes would be made to the ordinances, not yet finalized, to try to put an end to uncivil behavior.
The tourist saturation of Santiago has been on the table of the administrations for years. Last year, the city council launched the campaign Fraxilewhich included posters with a decalogue of good practices to remind visitors that residents have the right to rest and that heritage must be taken care of. The informants’ proposal is an extension of this initiative. The local government has taken other measures in recent months: a moratorium to prohibit the opening of new souvenir shops in the old quarter for a year and the illegality of tourist apartments that do not have a municipal license.
Sanmartín’s team has presented a proposal to the Xunta to create a tourist tax, but the measure is awaiting negotiation with a Galician government that has settled into a discourse encouraging tourism and denying overcrowding in the Galician capital. The possibility of applying a tax to visitors has been welcomed by the employers’ association, but met with scepticism by the Galician president, Alfonso Rueda, who has postponed the call for a meeting with the mayor on the subject until after the peak summer season.
