Santiago de Compostela is the holiest Christian site in Europe, being the supposed burial place of St. James, and pilgrims have been walking there for more than 1,000 years. Suppose that a pilgrim spends a weeks or months walking from France or Portugal to this sacred site, what does the committed Christian find on entering the old city? An official rainbow crosswalk and streets covered in sacred Rainbow Flags:
Here’s a different crosswalk in which we can see the directional sign for the Camino and a Rainbow-enhanced crosswalk in the same frame (multiple pilgrimage routes enter the city at different points):
Suppose that the tired pilgrim wants to rest in a park and be fresh before transitioning (so to speak) over this sacred pavement?
The rested pilgrim will walk past a Queers for Palestine display after entering the city:
The Praza do Obradoiro, adjacent to the Cathedral, is the traditional gathering place for pilgrims. It has been decorated with two Joe Biden-style official trans-enhanced Rainbow Flags (the “True Flag”?):
What if the pilgrim wants some ideas from the city’s official tourist office, a few steps from the Cathedral?
Perhaps the Christian pilgrim is tired and needs refreshment? It will be served by someone in a sacred outfit:
Pilgrims can dine with an overhead canopy of Rainbow Flags:
If they have money left over, they can buy souvenirs:
A variety of stores practice Rainbow-first Retail:
(“Orgullo” means “Pride” in Spanish)
Can the pilgrim prepare for the rigors of Rainbow Flag worship while on the road? Absolutely! If the pilgrim happens to walk through Celanova, Spain, for example, he/she/ze/they will find that the former monastery is now a town hall and that a Rainbow Flag is larger and higher than any of the government flags (tough to see because it had been rolled up by the wind, but it is in the upper right corner):
There were rainbow flags in Ourense as well, but Pontevedra, Spain has gone a little farther with its town hall:
The transition from traditional Christian to Queers for Palestine is encapsulated neatly in Pontevedra in which pro-Palestinian graffiti is adjacent to a ruined monastery:
A clothing store in Pontevedra practices Rainbow-first Retail:
Based on the above, is it fair to conclude that the inevitable End Stage of European Christianity is Rainbow Flagism and/or Queers for Palestine? Spaniards were willing to fight for centuries to make the Iberian peninsula completely Christian. Now Spain is covered in the sacred symbols of Rainbow Flagism and is on track for a conversion to Islam via immigration demographics.
For readers who ask “Didn’t you take pictures of anything other than rainbow flags in Santiago de Compostela?” here are some photos inside the Cathedral (get there 45 minutes prior to a mass if you want a seat, even though there are at least four masses per day; no need to dress up because the masses accommodate pilgrims who might have arrived dusty):
Here’s the apparently-never-used front entrance:
Don’t skip the Cathedral Museum because it gives you the chance to look over the main square where the pilgrims gather underneath the Trans-enhanced Rainbow Flags. Try not to show up on a Sunday afternoon/Monday morning as I did because most of the museums are closed all day Monday and may close early on Sunday. I had especially wanted to go to the pilgrimage museum, but will have to some that for another Pride.
Here’s an image taken from a balcony that is accessible only from the Cathedral Museum:
Does it make sense to do the pilgrimage? I’m not sure if modern pilgrims have mental space to reflect the way that pilgrims did 1000, 500, or even 50 years ago. Why not? The smartphone. If you’re getting emails about bills, projects at your house, things happening at work, etc., you’re not in the same mental place as a Christian pilgrim was in the pre-smartphone era. One group that I met seemed to have combined some of the best of the old and new worlds. They signed up for a tour with Active Adventures and eight of them were guided and shuttled over a monthlong pilgrimage route in a little more than a week, starting in Bilbao. When the (French) Camino was an interesting and peaceful footpath they walked (8-10 miles per day). When the Camino coincided with a boring/busy road, they hopped a shuttle bus.
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LGBT stuff was not as prominent when I completed 100km on the Portugal/Spanish coastline Camino trail (minimum to get the official certificate) in 2022 but I did cross that street you photographed. Hope you got to see the giant thurible in action at the Cathedral — thrilling. My pilgrimage was relatively peaceful since my cell phone sim card gave out when I got to Portugal and I was unable to find a replacement that would allow calls to the US. BTW, I think most Catholics would consider Rome to be the “holiest Christian site in Europe.”
Trying to figure out why you’re so obsessed with the rainbow? Most people have no problem ignoring all this but you can’t stop posting about it even on vacation. Are you secretly one of those drainpipe climbers from Brussels?
I think it’s an important observation worth discussing.
@kfj, the obsession is there because it is OK to fly and display any flag as long as it is LGBTQ flag. Want to fly a Christian? You cannot [1]:
“Still, a few of the flags were associated with other groups or causes—national Pride Week, emergency medical service workers, and a community bank. In fact, the city had never rejected a flag-raising request until 2017 when Harold Shurtleff, the director of an organization called Camp Constitution, asked to hold a flag raising ceremony for a “Christian Flag.””
What’s so specials about the LGBTQ+ religion that they can have their flag but Christian cannot? And why is the LGBTQ+ religious rainbow in both public and private display but hardly a Christian or other religious flags?
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/05/02/1095943871/supreme-court-says-boston-unconstitutionally-barred-christian-flag-from-city-hal
Imagine if the rainbow flag servant was someone wearing an anti-abortion symbol, that servant would be fired for being extrema or what have you. However, wearing and talking about LGBTQ+? The servant is loved!
It seems to me that philg is trying to figure out why other people are obsessed with rainbow flags.
Rainbow flag has roots in Bible, Genesis. God for the first time established rainbow, an inverted bow, ancient sign of peace, as a sign to Noah that God is not going to send another flood to wipe out humankind, descendants of Noah. Noah hesitated to move out of the arc barbecue he anticipated that his descendants will sin again. This was first covenant that God established in the Bible. Before end of flood rainbow was not in the sky, the cloud cover was too deep.
Other possibilities to explain rainbow – sign for spectrum. But not likely, it does not cover microwave or infrared.
Yet another possibility – sign for Spectrum, secret super-national evil organization that persecuted James Bond, agent 007.
Given it Bible roots, I see how rainbow sign may be acceptable to some not-traditionally oriented Catholic priests, based on media accounts. I have very deep respect for Catholicism and its practitioners, this is about fee bad apples.
Phil understands the rainbow flags are a form of domination, humiliation and intimidation, rather than celebration.
kfj: If “most people” ignore more than 1,000 rainbow flags hung in a city (my estimate of the number in Santiago de Compostela if we include the small ones hanging over the streets) and Rainbow Flagism is the official state religion (see the massive letters on the town hall, above) then the only logical response is… more rainbow flags.
I am so ashamed of all the typos I made above.
Philip reference to Get Smart in his latest post made me review my comment. In third possibility, I of course meant to write Spectre, not Spectrum. Also not “fee bad apples” but “few bad apples”. Etc…
They kicked your (figurative / collective / virtual) butt out of there in 1496. Are you gambling on the fact that there’s simply not enough Jews in Portugal these days to replay that, or that the current residents will embrace the return, a’la England and Germany? Or that the current government doesn’t have the broad powers of king Manuel I?
Joe: the beauty of an EU passport is that one isn’t betting on conditions in a particular country to be perfect. The holder of a US passport isn’t doomed to suffer tyranny and lack of abortion care for pregnant people under Ron DeSantis in Florida. He/she/ze/they can move to a progressive paradise ruled by Science such as California, New York, or Maskachusetts. Similarly, there are currently 27 countries in the EU and each one has a distinctive culture to at least some extent. Attitudes toward Jews/Israel are going to vary from EU nation to EU nation, just as they vary from US state to US state. Palm Beach County, for example, is the world’s largest holder of Israel bonds while Queers for Palestine march in the progressive states. https://www.bondbuyer.com/news/palm-beach-county-florida-becomes-worlds-largest-investor-in-israel-bonds
Walking the Portugal route would fill the annual Portugal residency & make for a few novel blog posts about rainbow flags.
My wife and I walked the 500 miles Frances route. When we got to Santiago de Compostela I didn’t notice all the rainbow flags… we had been conditioned to watch how people interacted. On the walk what we most noticed was the kindness and respect people showed each other. Differences were met with curiosity rather than contempt. If more people followed Jesus’ way of love rather than fighting for what they want, the world would be a much better place.
There are several articles about how cell phones have changed the camino experience on the site https://www.walkingtopresence.com
We had a wonderful and refreshing time walking the camino. Our phones were mostly off… just used for making some notes and for logistics for the pilgrimage. Our lessons learned / take-aways https://verber.com/camino-lessons/