Necesidades del peregrino ignacianopercepciones de una experiencia

Resum

The Ignatian Way is a pilgrimage route that recreates the path that Ignatius of Loyola travelled in 1522 from his birthplace in Azpeitia (Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country) to the Cova de Manresa and Montserrat (Barcelona, in Catalonia). While it is clear that this is a pilgrimage route, it is not unrelated to an existing geography and heritage, both natural and cultural. Preliminary studies show that, as happens in other cases, the motivations of the pilgrims are ranged as religious and spiritual, but also as other more 'touristic' such as culture, sport or nature (Abad, et al, 2016; Olsen, 2013). This study proposes an approach to the Ignatian pilgrim from different 'types of religious tourism' (Griffin, 2007), in order to understand more deeply the interconnection between the experiences linked to sacred spaces and the most basic needs of tourists, people on the move, for whom is necessary to ensure services such as accommodation or signalling. The field work is focused on the qualitative analysis of 18 testimonies from the website of the Ignatian Way. Those testimonies are of pilgrims who have done some stage of the Ignatian Way, and the analysis is realised to learn about their perceptions and needs. This will help to identify the strengths and weaknesses that pilgrims manifest (directly or indirectly) with the purpose of continue working on the development of a pilgrimage of the 21st century, which cannot ignore its role as a tourism product that will help to boost the local economy and release the territories for which elapses.