Primitive Way: my experience

The boy began to envy the freedom of the wind, and realized he could be like it. Nothing stood in his way except himself.

Santiago was in Tarifa, the African Levante wind cradling his face, and it was there that he realized something fundamental: the concept of deconstruction.

There are moments when life, with its background noise, cries out for an incessant need for conceptual reconstruction. June 2021: the pandemic was now a faded parenthesis in a frozen interval. Yet, that terrible memory dragged with it a harsh residue, made up of social anxiety and constant panic attacks. The mind searched for a breaking point, a scream capable of piercing the silence of that forced apathy.

The scroll had a well-defined name in my head: Camino de Santiago.

I'd dreamed of backpacking along Via Iacobea for years, but I'd always let fear dictate the rules of the game (a fear whose contours I struggle to decipher today, in hindsight). Yet, once I'd put that fear aside, the real question was no longer whether to set out, but where to head.

The logic of the world would have dictated the French Way. All the blogs, guides, and friends converged on the same reassuring narrative: it's flatter, full of services, socially dense. It offers the illusion of a protected journey. But the illusion was precisely the suffocating veil I was fleeing. I sought emptiness. I wanted the most isolated. I wanted the origin.

After a bit of research, here it is: the Primitive Way.

Choosing the oldest path meant choosing the most bare path. If the French promised sharing, the Primitive demanded a close encounter with solitude. The truth is, I desperately needed to be alone with my thoughts, to inhabit that silence that everyday life always tries to fill.

To reconstruct the essential, therefore, I first had to accept being deconstructed from the path.

At the origins of the myth: the history of Primitivo

Choosing the most ancient route wasn't just a geographical quirk, but a return to the origins. The Primitive Way, in fact, isn't just one of the many Jacobean routes; it's the archetype, the starting point from which everything began.

To understand this, we must step back in time to a harsh and foggy Middle Ages, precisely around the year 814. Imagine the scene: a hermit named Pelagius follows a shower of stars deep in an Asturian forest (a campus stellae , hence the name Compostela) and discovers a forgotten tomb. When news of the discovery of the remains of the Apostle James reached the court of Oviedo, King Alfonso II, known as the Chaste, immediately grasped the event's epochal significance, not only spiritual but geopolitical: Christian Europe, squeezed by the Islamic advance to the south, needed a symbol to rally around.

Alfonso wasted no time. He shouldered his backpack—so to speak—and became, in effect, the first pilgrim in history.

That tortuous path, which the king opened by splitting the mountains of Asturias to reach Galicia, became the very first itinerary of faith and isolation in the Western world. Centuries before the French Way became the main route and, in modern times, a decidedly more pop and commercial phenomenon, only this space existed, reclaimed from the fog, chestnut groves, and vertical silence. It was such a harsh and wild route that in the Middle Ages, pilgrims detoured to Oviedo to venerate the relics of the Cathedral, but they often made wills before venturing among these peaks.

Walking here today, then, ceases to be a simple trek. It becomes an act of existential archaeology. It means treading the same rough stone grazed by the sandals of a medieval king over a thousand years ago, moving in a suspended temporal dimension.

The path and the harshness of the Asturian land

Primitivo doesn't give any discounts. Those who set out expecting a relaxing walk quickly come face to face with the reality of the Asturian and Galician geography: approximately 320 kilometers of unrelenting emotional and physical ups and downs.

The initial stages, from Oviedo onward, require both legs and mind. The climb is constant, and thanks to the Buen Camino app—which has become my daily compass—I've been able to explore and choose the less traveled paths, pursuing alternative routes through the mountains and the most arduous detours. I remember one day in particular when, climbing along the ridges, I realized I was walking above cloud level: a sea of white below me, suspended in absolute silence, as if I were outside of the world.

The most famous alternative route is found after Tineo, in Campiello: on one side the "soft" route that descends towards Pola de Allande, on the other the legendary Hospitales variant.

I was looking for ruggedness, so I chose the latter. It's a feared and spectacular high-altitude route: miles of grassland completely exposed to the elements, without a café, fountain, or shelter (you have to carry a fair amount of water), where you walk among the stone ruins of ancient medieval hospitals that once saved exhausted pilgrims from storms.

I've created a small table that might help you get a rough idea of my journey.

Stage and Itinerary	Distance (Km)	Max Altitude	Region	Density and Atmosphere
1. Oviedo ➔ San Juan de Villapañada	30.5	~300 m	Asturias	Isolated : First hills and quiet villages.
2. San Juan de Villapañada ➔ Salas	20.2	~350 m	Asturias	Isolated : Rural valleys and dense woods.
3. Salas ➔ Tineo	20.2	~780 m	Asturias	Isolated : Challenging and solitary climb.
4. Tineo ➔ Borres / Campiello	18.0	~800 m	Asturias	Isolated : Approaching the wild ridge.
5. Hospitales variant (Borres ➔ Berducedo)	26.0	~1,200 m	Asturias	Hermitic : The high-altitude route, my choice among the peaks.
6. Berducedo ➔ Grandas de Salime	20.1	~1,100 m	Asturias	Isolated : Steep descent towards the Navia River dam.
7. Grandas de Salime ➔ In Fonsagrada	25.3	~1,144 m	Asturias / Galicia	Isolated : The mountain pass that marks the entrance to Galicia.
8. A Fonsagrada ➔ O Cádavo	24.5	~900 m	Galicia	Isolated : Wooded ridges and wind farms in the wind.
9. O Cádavo ➔ Lugo	30.5	~700 m	Galicia	Moderate : Long descent to the splendid walled city.
10. Lugo ➔ San Romao da Retorta	19.7	~500 m	Galicia	Moderate : Quiet Galician countryside.
11. San Romao ➔ Melide	28.3	~550 m	Galicia	From Isolated to Crowded : The junction in Melide with the French Way.
12. Melide ➔ O Pedrouzo	33.3	~400 m	Galicia	Crowded : An immense human river, bars and services everywhere.
13. O Pedrouzo ➔ Santiago de Compostela	20.0	~380 m	Galicia	Crowded : The final, exciting flow to the cathedral.

The stages may increase if you decide to continue towards Muxia

and Finisterre. (You can find my experience in this article.)

I remember light, gentle tears upon arriving in Santiago: a breaking away from the past. That cathedral marked the true beginning of deconstruction, breaking its perimeter and merging into the dawning Art of Being.

Need help organizing your backpack? Check out my tips. here

If the Primitive Way doesn't convince you, you can read my article on the various alternative routes .

If you missed the most common symbols you'll find on the trail, you can read this article.