"In Western society there is an absence of moral values, people are looking for something, something different, capable of filling this void," said Father Jenaro Cebrian Franco, who has run Santiago's pilgrimage centre for the past six years. He said he could relate "countless experiences" of people who have had a religious or spiritual awakening on the walk.

In 2004, the last Holy Year - which is whenever July 25, the name day of St. James, falls on a Sunday - some 180,000 people took the Camino. Since January 2010 - another Holy Year - the number is already around 260,000. The pilgrims arrive exhausted but exultant at the pilgrimage centre, an old house on one of the city's narrow cobbled streets, many limping with bandaged feet or carrying heavy backpacks, and swapping stories about their experiences. Many pilgrims queue again outside the cathedral to embrace the statue of Saint James.

But not all are true believers, or even Christians. From 2004 to 2009, the percentage of those undertaking the Camino for purely non-religious reasons has nearly doubled from 5.61 percent to 9.81 percent.

Be they "believers or non-believers" the Camino leads people "to the mystery of something that is at the heart of all human beings and which only has to be in the right conditions to appear."