Pilgrim joy and riotous fiesta all part of final day

To Santiago / A sort of pilgrimmage: There is near constant whooping, cheering and laughing throughout the eve of St James's Day as groups of younger pilgrims rush into the great square in front of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

Finally, they are at their destination and they are ecstatic. They let rip - shouting and hollering and hugging each other with unbridled delight.

Some will have been walking or cycling for between 700 or 800km, depending on where in the Pyrenees they began their journey.

Some will have joined the Camino - the Way of St James - at points across northern Spain nearer Santiago, such as Burgos or León.

Other pilgrims who enter the square, the older ones, usually restrain their delight but are no less pleased at their achievement.

It must be an extraordinary, and not necessarily comfortable, feeling to arrive at the end of a pilgrimage characterised by contemplation, spirituality and camaraderie to be plunged into a city bursting with life.

Yesterday was St James's Day, the most important day in the calendar for Santiago and the place was packed with thousands of pilgrims and tourists.

It was marked the day before by prancing, dancing Macnas-style street characters, buskers galore (some classical but most playing Galician pipes), restaurants and bars overflowing on to the narrow old town streets and the whole thing rounded off by a midnight fireworks display.

All a far cry from life on the Camino . . .

The Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance cathedral of Santiago is another extraordinarily impressive sight. It is built of granite, the local rock, and is festooned with statues, many of them pilgrims, and scallops, the symbol of St James and the Camino.

The most ornate part is the altar and choir. Lots of gleaming gilt, gold leaf and silver, and lots of baroque.

But beneath the altar is a tiny crypt and what the pilgrim has come to see: the tomb of St James the Apostle. "Go forth to every part of the world," Jesus reputedly said and James obeyed his command.

He is said to have brought Christianity to Spain, the evidence for which is St Isidore, the bishop of Seville, who maintained that James "preached the Gospel to the peoples of Hispania and in the western places . . ."

Which is where his remains were said to have been interred, in Compostela, after his execution in Jerusalem in AD44.

They were rediscovered in 818 and today lie in a silver and gold-coloured metal casket sitting on top of a white marble table on which are carved two peacocks drinking from a bowl. (Peacocks were an early Christian symbol because, in ancient mythology, their flesh was said to be immortal.)

Pilgrims descend into the crypt and file past the casket silently. It is at the rear of a recess in a wall, beneath a single bright light, and beyond touch.

Yesterday, over 5,000 people crammed into the cathedral for the special pilgrims' Mass.

The celebrant was the Archbishop of Santiago, Julian Barrio Barrio, who was assisted by 25 priests, including Fr Eamonn O'Higgins, recorded in the sacristy ledger as a member of the Legionnaires of Christ from Ireland.

An elderly nun sang at various stages. Her voice had the sweet piercing quality of a 16-year-old but she must have been well into her 60s.

The cathedral's massive organ gave musical depth but, sadly, was little used.

Other Masses continued hourly throughout the day. Outside the cathedral, a raucous and well supported rally of Galician nationalists of the BNG and communists from the UP party, vied for attention.

The night before, jeering separatist youths ran the gauntlet with baton wielding police in the narrow streets.

They have the running of the bulls in Pamplona; here it's the running of the separatists. Young girls gazed admiringly at the youths and applauded their goading of the police.

Galicians are proud of their saint. But they are proud also of their cultural identity which, as far as my travelling companion Tony and I can detect, a very substantial number want to see translated into a degree of political separateness from the rest of Spain.

As St James's Day mellows into a lazy evening, pilgrims are still streaming into the square. They are all ages, but younger ones - teens to 40-year-olds - dominate. They are all nationalities, races, social backgrounds and, for all I know, creeds.

Religion, or adherence to organised religion, does not seem to me to be the chief motivating factor for most pilgrims.

While most clearly believe in a God, it is more a spiritual yearning that propels them to walk to Santiago.

And when they arrive, they enter the cathedral by the Portico of Glory, where statues of prophets - Moses and Isaiah laughing in greeting - gaze down.

A central column supports a welcoming statue of St James. When pilgrims enter, they touch the base.

So many - millions upon millions from all corners of the earth - have done so since it was made in 1188 that the imprint of a hand can be detected on the smooth stone.

But the column is fenced off today for restoration and is out of hands' reach. I want to come back when I can touch it.

• My thanks to the historian Dr Oscar Morales of Trinity College, Dublin, for pointing me to the works of Dagmar Ó Riain-Raedel ("The Irish Medieval Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela", History Ireland, August 1998) and Roger Stalley ("Sailing to Santiago: Medieval Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and its Artistic Influence in Ireland", a chapter in Settlement and Society in Medieval Ireland: Studies presented to FX Martin; ed John Bradley; Boethius Press, 1988).

Series concluded