MOOCs 2025-2026

The MOOC courses (Massive Online Open Courses) of la Cátedra (the Chair) del Camino de Santiago and the Pilgrimages are online, massive and open courses, designed for the dissemination of the heritage and cultural values of the Camino de Santiago. They are offered through online educational platforms and have been designed so that distance or time availability are not impediments to deepening their knowledge.

"Jacobean Topography of the City of Santiago de Compostela, International Pilgrimage Destination" is a MOOC that aims to deepen the knowledge of the millennial cultural, historical and spiritual phenomenon of pilgrimages to the tomb of the Apostle Saint James the Greater. Year after year, they continue to grow in importance, attracting hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all continents, and to be a continual object of study and research by European and international universities. Consequently, the city of Santiago de Compostela, goal of this pilgrimage, preserves a rich architectural and artistic heritage internationally recognized by UNESCO with its declaration as a World Heritage site in 1985. An important aspect is offering material and spiritual services to the pilgrims: lodgings, places of leisure, boticas, charitable soup kitchens, infirmaries, brothels, markets, etc., such as the Hospital Real, the cemetery of la Rúa da Trinidade, the Cruceiro del Home Santo, as well as places of Jacobean devotion such as the French-founded Chapel of the Saviour in the Cathedral itself, the fountain and chapel of Rúa do Franco or the churches of Salomé and San Fiz de Solovio. The contents of this MOOC are designed to discover and explain them, offering the student a "walking" along the urban itineraries that would have been taken by a pilgrim of yesteryear. Upon completion, the student will be well acquainted with the Jacobean topography of Compostela.

The commitment hospitality demonstrated on the pilgrimage routes made this feature one of the hallmarks of the Camino de Santiago, offering medical and spiritual services provided by Church and civil authorities, royal and aristocratic benefactors and by common folk. As was common in medieval society, on the Compostela route charity and hospitality inspired the founding of hospitals dedicated to meeting the spiritual, material, nutritional and sanitary needs of a growing number of pilgrims. According to the origins of the establishments, care and reception centres can be classified as shelters supported by royal patrons, bishops, cathedrals, military orders, monasteries, noble estates, parishes, guilds and lay confraternities. As in centuries past, the current international context is key to understanding the Jacobean phenomenon and the growing success of the Camino de Santiago and the vitality of today’s Jacobean hospitality. The first decades of the 21st century have been marked by advances in real-time communications and social media, new data storage devices and archives, the widespread use of the internet and the development of user-generated networks. The web of Caminos de Santiago, as an active sector of this global trellis, provides "low-cost connectivity" springing from the immediacy and warmth of human relations. The dedicated labors of the associations of Friends of the Camino de Santiago and the extension of hospitality are examples of the vigor and timeliness of human values embedded in the pilgrimage to Santiago in the 21st century.