THE PILGRIMAGE: AN EDUCATIONAL “ROUTE”?

The life of a man is linked to the movement; this is a metaphor of human existence1. Mobility has an exceptional force in inside with regard to the ability to change the characteristics of a society or an individual, thus becoming a formative and generative experience2. The humanity has expressed since the earliest times the need to travel along the establishment of paths that through history and accession have become contemporary pilgrimages. The pilgrimage, as a specific form of travel, is a religious experience, on the other hand it is just as a social event3 with an embryonical formative potential. This apparent redundancy and, indeed, almost tautology, has a subtle meaning. Personal and emotional involvement4 of the subject who makes a pilgrimage, has formative consequences, both on a personal level and in the contexts in which it plays a part. It is an eminently social phenomenology, involving people, environments, values, roles, expectations, i.e. cultural as well as organizational models of society. In the light of these considerations you cannot remain amazed if about fifty thousand pilgrims have traveled just in July 20184 one of the most emblematic routes in Europe: The Santiago de Compostela Pilgrim's Way.