Welcome to Saint James

The local committee organizing the 30th Conference of the ISSR/SISR that will soon take place in Saint James welcomes you. For months, we have been working to make enjoyable your visit to our town, and to ensure that conference work will be done in the best conditions. We have lectures and classrooms equipped with all the technological means to allow communication among all participants, either in plenary sessions or thematic, as well as in other activities scheduled. The high number of applicants has raised some infrastructure difficulties, but we believe that all the spaces will be functional to the conference goal. 

Saint James is nowadays a little town of 100,000 inhabitants which gathers a historic tradition of more than ten centuries and that is confronted daily to nearly thirty thousand university students. Furthermore, it is the administrative capital of the Galician Autonomous Region (Galicia) which population (2,800,000 inhabitants) represents almost the 7% of Spanish population. Citizens of Saint James are mostly functionaries (administration and university), university students, and entrepreneurs and workers of services sector (housing, commerce, leisure, hostellers, etc.).

The city has public transports (bus and taxi) but most of the people just walk, as distances among house, work and leisure are pretty short. The town’s rhythm is slow, no one gets up at dawn (shops open in many cases at ten) and there are activities, involving pleasure for the biggest part, until the sun goes up.

In 1975, the XIII Conference (Religion Sociology at that time) was celebrated in Lloret de Mar (Gerona, Catalonia). These thirty four years have been crucial for the configuration of a democratic Spain, as well as for the gradual transformation of functional systems, habits, traditions, and basic references.

The “Catholic Spain” is still real (nearly eight million Spaniards accomplish the dominical precept), but it is no longer the main reference of society and individuals, and every time it is less and less a common spectacle. Saint James –in high complexity and ambiguity ways – is still one of the places where the new crisscross of traditional devotion and recursively tourism can be observed. The belief in pilgrimage rituals (some recently invented) survive with other beliefs, other cultures and festive leisure.

The secularizing processes of these thirty years have basically consisted in the clerical resources reduction of the mundane activity of the Catholic Church, and the abandoning of public places for religious manifestations, being substituted by laic rituals of protest or other ones linked to sports (particularly football lived by many as a succedaneum of religion). Governments have progressively understood the “a-confessional” State (art. 16 of 1978’s Constitution) as laicism, rising conflicts among Catholic Church and politic leaders. The presentation and discussion of some civil laws has produced strong public polemics, having an impact in the new ideological processes of public discussion. A new law of “Religious Liberty”–which aim is not clear– has been announced. Some interpret it as possible cut of catholic liberties, while others understand it as more liberty for non-catholic confessions.

Last years main news in Spain are the flourishing and expansion of other religions, mainly Islam, and the political power recognition of religions, confessions and sects “roots”. To understand the complexity of this phenomenon it is necessary to step back to the sixties and seventies, and to the last years of Franco’s dictatorship. It has been possible to shape a changing image showing a strong link among “progressive” ideologies and Christian groups that operatively assumed the consequences of the II Vatican Council. The correspondent mobilizations of young Catholics and their commitment against Franco’ regime produced this image of ideas and projects that tried to change Catholic Church from inside and make it “engaged” with political fights. There were moments of exaltation and utopia in which religious impulse served to legitimate left political forces as democratic and develop a step towards democracy in the respect of political and religious pluralism. It has been thirty years since then; there was John Paul II and then came the Pontificate of Benedict XVI. The image shows an involution. Progressive tendencies appear again to denounce and critic what catholic is meant to be, and Catholicism seems to come back to inquisitorial fantasies. The last years in Spain are disconcerting in different ways in religious matters: experience, liturgical practice, doctrinal configuration and moral. With an enormous diversity, Spain is confronted to plurality challenge. The reflections that will result from this Conference may contribute to reorient the path of reflection and religious practice (plural) in our country.

We would like to thanks those who had given their financial support to celebrate this Conference, starting from the Universidad de Santiago de Compostela that will receive in its residencies not quite few participants and, particularly the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Political Sciences for the use of their facilities. We have also been given founds from Xunta de Galicia (Galician Autonomous Government) and “Pluralismo y Convivencia” Foundation (Spain Justice Ministry), which we deeply thanks.

We hope that all participants will have a fruitful and interesting stay in our city, first as an appropriate working place, and then in matters of, non limited, creative leisure.

For the Local Committee,
Juan-Luis Pintos de Cea-Naharro