Arriving in Santiago

The Pilgrim's Office

It is not inside the Cathedral, which is where everyone goes first. It is a few minutes' walk away, and it is where you hand in your credential and collect your Compostela.

It opens every day of the year, but the hours change with the season: in summer it opens far longer than in winter. Check the day before on the Pilgrim's Office website.

In July and August there is a queue. You take a ticket with your phone and wait wherever you like, so the first thing to do on arrival is take your number; the Cathedral afterwards.

What to bring to the desk

• Your paper credential with its stamps. The count you keep here does not do that job: it tells you whether you qualify and it feeds your diary, but at the desk they look at the paper.
• An identity document.
• And be ready to say why you walked. They ask, and your answer decides which document they give you.

The Compostela

You need the last 100 km on foot or on horseback — 200 by bike — and 2 stamps a day over that final stretch.

The Compostela itself is free. The distance certificate, the one with your kilometres and your starting point written on it, is a separate document and that one is paid for; so is the tube to carry it home unfolded.

The pilgrim's mass

There is a pilgrim's mass every day in the Cathedral, and more than one in season. The Cathedral sets the times and they change: check on the day.

The botafumeiro does not fly at every mass. It flies on a few fixed dates in the year and, beyond that, when someone pays for it. There is no way to know the night before whether it will fly at the mass you attend.

Where to leave your backpack

You cannot enter the Cathedral wearing your backpack. There are luggage lockers in the centre and at the bus station, and almost every hostel in Santiago will keep it for you on the day you leave.

And afterwards

Another way leaves from Santiago: Fisterra and Muxía, about ninety kilometres to the sea. It has its own documents at the end, the Fisterrana and the Muxiana.