Why is the Camino Francés in Spain?

Yes, Francés, as in French.  The Camino Francés does start in France – just – right on the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains. If you take the high mountain pass – a grueling day – you are in Spain by that afternoon. This was the route that armies, like the Romans and Napoleonic, used as a shortcut and safer path between France and Spain.

You land in Navarre; a region that went back and forth between France and Spain with various royal families claiming it as theirs. This, until 1512, when it did officially become part of Spain. But the French interests and influences did not fade away. In the Middle Ages, French pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela poured across the border. The Camino Francés, from St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, was the favorite route.

In those days the pilgrimage was a perilous undertaking. Those poor pilgrims, who had enough to contend with just finding their way, food, and shelter and not dying of disease, were also preyed upon by thieves and brigands. To care for the pilgrims, religious orders and para-military chivalrous orders, many of them French, set up shop along the Camino. Orders such as the Order of Santiago, Order of the Hospitallers, the monks of Cluny, and the Knight Templars established hostels, hospitals as well as protecting the pilgrims from the bandits.

There was a political slant to all this: during the Middle Ages, the Moors had established the western Islamic Empire in Spain and the Christian world was very anxious to protect and promote and Christianity in the area. So what better way than to support the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and care for the pilgrims.