Galicia will invest 15.6M€ so that all the itineraries of the Pilgrim’s Way to Santiago arrive at Xacobeo 21 in the best conditions.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism proposes the design of a security plan and the establishment of assistance protocols for the celebration of next Holy Year.

The Xunta de Galicia continues advancing in the preparations for the Xacobeo2021 and it does it giving continuity to the important investments that are being made in the different roads since 2015, within the Master Plan of the Way. Specifically, the new works oriented to the supervision, maintenance and tuning of the Xacobean Routes will mean an investment of 15.6 million euros and will affect an area of more than 1,250 kilometres in trails and roads of 121 town councils in the next two years. These investments will benefit all stretches of the Camino, but in the first two years the largest investment will correspond to the French Way, the most traveled.

In addition, and aimed at advancing in the coordination of security in the Roads, the Minister of Culture and Tourism held an interdisciplinary commission in the Delegation of the Government of Galicia as the first step for inter-administrative coordination and to define strategies and reception spaces for large groups of pilgrims in the coming Holy Year. In this sense, Roman Rodriguez addressed the need to design an operational plan in this field to face the celebration of Jacobeo 21 with the greatest guarantees and respond to the challenge of managing flows that this event will mean in the Community.

Thus, Román Rodríguez put on the table the creation of a commission in charge of the design of a security operational plan, to begin in 2020, based on coordination, with the participation of the State Security Corps and Forces and Civil Protection and that integrates all the agents involved in these tasks, favouring coordination between all the actors involved in the management of the Camino and including as members of this commission the representatives of the provincial councils of Pontevedra and Ourense, which for the time being are not participating in it.

In this sense, the Xunta requested information to know the state of the necessary road safety improvements in the French Way and in the Portuguese, the two most travelled itineraries, and highlighted the importance of also attending the possible conflictive points of the rest of the routes anticipating problematic situations.

Permanent improvement
In this sense, Román Rodríguez commented that the Xunta has been working extensively on the road safety of pilgrims through actions carried out in the improvement and signalling projects initiated in 2015 within the framework of the Master Plan of the Way and that, following the schedule, will culminate in 2020 with an investment that, taken together, exceeds 10 million euros. This amount will be added to the eight maintenance contracts, worth 15.6 million euros, approved at the last Consello da Xunta and which will guarantee until 2022 the conservation of the work done throughout this period.

Awareness campaigns
All these actions will be complemented with awareness campaigns among pilgrims, distribution of copper backpacks in hostels and distribution of the Emergency Guide for Pilgrims on the Roads of Santiago published last year, fruit of the commitment of collaboration between the Vice Presidency and Consellería de Presidencia, Administraciones públicas y Justicia and the Agencia Turismo de Galicia, an agreement that allows to incorporate the groups of Civil Protection volunteers in the task of reinforcing the safety of pilgrims.

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