Sexual harassment is ‘endemic’ on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage: Women reveal the ‘terrifying’ incidents that left them fearing for their lives.
Women walking the famous Camino de Santiago trail have revealed they have faced ‘terrifying’ sexual harassment in rural areas of Spain, Portugal and France which has left them fearing for their lives.
Nine women have told The Guardian they had been harassed while attempting the pilgrimage route over the past five years.
In a series of disturbing allegations, seven of the women say they faced men masturbating or touching themselves in Spain and Portugal, one of whom chased a victim through the countryside.
Another woman said she had to fight off disgusting comments from several men, while the ninth said a man drove up to her in a van and begged her to get inside.
The horrifying incidents took place as the female pilgrims were walking along remote stretches of the Camino, which stretches nearly 500 miles from St. Jean-Pied-du-Port, near Biarritz in France, to Santiago de Compostela, in Spain.
Lorena Gaibor, the founder of Camigas, an online forum for female pilgrims, said: ‘Sexual harassment is endemic on the Camino… Every freaking year we get reports of women experiencing the same things.’
A 25-year-old woman, named by The Guardian as Rosie, said she was hiking through a forested route in Portugal over the summer when she came across a man wearing no trousers and masturbating.
She described the incident as ‘terrifying’ and claimed the local police did not answer the phone when she tried to call them. ‘I just felt completely alone,’ she recalled.
Rosie, who did not give her surname, said this was an added element that female hikers are facing on a trail which is already physically and mentally demanding.
The Camino de Santiago trail has soared in popularity in recent years, with a record 446,000 walking it last year – 53 per cent of them women.
Marie Albert, a journalist and feminist writer, told The Guardian that there is a ‘taboo’ around claiming the routes are unsafe for women.
During her huge trek to Santiago de Compostela in 2019, she recalled experiencing a number of aggressions.
