site.btaKiril Kartalov Presents Research on Camino Paths, Describes Them as Idea about Pilgrimage Creating Feeling of Liberation
Kiril Kartalov presented his research on the Camino paths, titled "The Flowers of Nations: Pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago", at the Diplomat Gallery in Sofia on Tuesday. The event was moderated by BTA Director General Kiril Valchev.
Kartalov said that the Camino is an idea about pilgrimage, which to this day, walking on foot along these paths, creates the feeling of liberation. "It is hard to talk about another pilgrimage destination with such force as the liberation after the Camino is," he added. He explained he had worked on the book for five years; it is based on archive documents and personal attempts at interpreting the documents but also his own attitude on the topic.
The author said that the "flower of nations" was an expression he found in a document preserved in the archives of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Kartalov quoted statistics from the cathedral's website, according to which between 600 and 800 Bulgarians a year walk the Camino. "That is since 2012, when again the Camino de Santiago became more popular, because there are different shades throughout the whole history of the Camino, when there were 200 people. Since the pandemic, there has been an upward trend to about 800, almost 1,000 people. I mean, there is a lot of interest in Bulgaria," he explained.
Valchev explained that one of the reasons he hosted the presentation of Kartalov's book was personal - he himself had walked the Camino. "The second reason is in my institutional capacity, because I am the Director General of the Bulgarian News Agency, Bulgaria's national news agency. And the BTA has a huge responsibility every day, through the news it collects from the world and publishes, to allow Bulgarians to travel and thus compare themselves with others," he noted.
"The interesting question is what is the Bulgarian Camino. I would very much like to follow in the footsteps of the relics of St. John of Rila, the patron saint of the Bulgarian people, the path of their return from Tarnovo to the Rila Monastery, to follow this model of the Camino in Western Europe," the BTA Director General said.
The event on Tuesday evening was attended by Adviser to the President on Culture Plamen Slavov, Diplomatic Institute Director Tanya Mihailova, Ambassador of Spain to Bulgaria Miguel Alonso Berrio, Maestro Valentin Stamov, and others.
/RY/
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