Przedsiębiorczość jako czynnik rozwoju Camino de Santiago w Polsce

Mróz, Franciszek

Przedsiębiorczość jako czynnik rozwoju Camino de Santiago w Polsce

Abstract

In 2003 the European network of Camino de Santiago – Way of St. James reached the border between Germany and Poland in Görlitz – Zgorzelec. In the following year, a group of fans of the Route of St. James in Poland started activities aimed at setting out and marking the first Polish sections of the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. In the next years, many regions of Poland witnessed initiatives of marking new sections of the Way of St. James. The projects were finalised with an impressive number of 34 marked Polish sections of the Way of St. James which jointly made the network of Camino de Santiago of a length of more than 6,460 km. Selected sections of the Way of St. James in Poland constitute the subject of research. Field studies were conducted during the years 2006–2017 in twelve Polish sections of Camino de Santiago. A length of more than 1,200 kilometres of the Route of St. James was examined (by walking). The objective of the research was to learn about transformations in the sector of tour-ism services which occurred on selected Polish sections of the Way of St. James and to ana-lyse entrepreneurial activities undertaken both by local government authorities, tourism asso-ciations and organisations, Brotherhoods and Associations of St. James, and businesses in order to develop pilgrimage movements, religious tourism and cultural tourism on the analysed route. When presenting research results, mainly the descriptive and analytical method, carto-graphic presentations methods and statistical methods have been used. The conducted research has shown that the designing, setting out and marking of 34 Polish sections of Camino de Santiago is mainly the contribution of groups of fans of the Way of St. James, Camino pilgrims, members of the Brotherhoods of St. James and Associations of St. James, and priests. In the majority of cases, this was a "grassroots" initiative and an ex-pression of social entrepreneurship of tens of people. It was only at subsequent stages of the development of the Way of St. James in individual regions that local government authorities gradually joined "Camino" projects.