Foreign pilgrim accused of setting one of northern Spain’s largest wildfires

Spanish police make arrest after 800 hectares destroyed in the fire on popular Camino de Santiago route

A pilgrim to northern Spain has been arrested on suspicion of starting one of the area’s largest wildfires and then continuing with his trek along the Camino de Santiago holy route.
Some 800 hectares were destroyed in the fire that started at about 4pm on Monday near the village of Castrillo de los Polvazares, having spread quickly by hot and windy conditions.
Local residents were told to stay indoors owing to the risk of smoke inhalation as firefighters battled to prevent the blaze from reaching a petrol station.
Authorities from the province of León said that a 33-year-old man “of foreign nationality” was arrested on Tuesday some 20km further along the pilgrimage route, known in Spain as the Camino de Santiago.
“There is a human intention to this fire; clearly someone started it, especially when that same evening we found a second ignition point,” said Eduardo Diego, the representative in León of the Castilla y León regional government. 
Police have not disclosed how or why the fire was started.
Walking the Camino has grown in popularity in recent years, particularly among international visitors after the success of the 2010 film about it, The Way, starring Martin Sheen.
The route, which translates as the Way of St James, is part of an extensive network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St James in Santiago de Compostela, north-west Spain.
In 2023, 446,000 people reached the end of the route in Santiago de Compostela, including 243,000 foreigners. The total is double the number of pilgrims from a decade ago.
Groups fighting to preserve the Camino from overtourism say the pilgrimage has become spoiled by badly behaved tourists.
“What used to be an intimate thing has become a rolling picnic,” José de la Riera, of the International Fraternity of the Camino de Santiago, told Spain’s TVE public TV station.
Santiago city authorities last year published rules for pilgrims urging visitors to behave modestly and respect the peace of others.
But Arantxa Madrazo, who lives in the pilgrimage town of Vilaboa, said the message is not getting across.
“In recent years the pilgrimage has become massified, and they think this is Ibiza or Marbella,” Ms Madrazo told the newspaper Diario de Pontevedra, describing how one pilgrim showed off to his friends by trespassing on her property and jumping naked into her swimming pool.
She said pilgrims defecate on people’s land, steal crops and fruit from their gardens and leave rubbish behind. “They seem to think they are lords of all they survey.”