It was on the outskirts of the northern Spanish town of Mieres, as she raced past colourful houses built of stone and wood-framed windows, that Sara Dhooma wrestled with the possibility that she might die.
Minutes earlier, the Canadian had been walking a remote section of the Camino de Santiago. After noticing a man was following her, she ducked into a cafe. When she re-emerged, the same man was seemingly waiting for her along another part of the ancient network of pilgrimage routes. This time he unzipped his trousers and grabbed his genitals.
“I was horrified,” said Dhooma, as she recounted the 2019 incident. There were no other people nearby; she watched terrified as he began moving towards her. “I felt very, very unsafe at that moment.”
Dhooma fled and the man chased her. When she spotted a home with smoke curling out of its chimney, she pushed through the doors, screaming for help. The man continued behind her. “I didn’t know if he had a weapon, I didn’t know what he wanted to do,” she said. “I thought I was going to die, I thought he was going to hurt me.”
It just so happened that the home she had entered belonged to a police officer, who was off-duty. The fateful twist may have prevented the situation from escalating.
Later it emerged that the man had a knife and bullets in his backpack, and a previous conviction for rape. “If I hadn’t found that house, I don’t know what would have happened,” Dhooma said.
Dhooma was one of nine women who spoke to the Guardian about incidents of sexual harassment they had experienced while walking the Camino de Santiago in the past five years.
The pilgrimage trail has long been a draw for people from around the world, with walkers crisscrossing routes across Europe to converge on the shrine of Saint James the Apostle in the Galician capital, Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrims have descended on the city’s baroque cathedral since the eighth century but in recent decades the number of believers and nonbelievers alike making the pilgrimage has boomed.
While the women who have spoken to the Guardian about sexual harassment are a fraction of the hundreds of thousands who undertake the pilgrimage each year, their stories hint at an issue described by the founder of one forum for female pilgrims as “endemic”.
Many of the incidents happened as women were alone and in areas where there were no other people nearby. Rosie, 25, said she had been walking a forested route near the Portuguese town of Tomar earlier this year when she spotted a man with no trousers on. He was masturbating as he watched her.
It was 7am and there was nobody else around, she said. “I hadn’t seen a car in 15 minutes.”
The man followed her for about a minute or so, speaking to her in Portuguese. She fled as quickly as she could, her pace slowed by her 10kg (22lb) backpack.
She tried to call the police but the signal was too weak to get through. She dialled again, her voice panic-struck as she explained in English that she was worried that the man might be following her. They instructed her to call the local police, who didn’t answer the phone. “It was terrifying,” she said. “I just felt completely alone at that point.”
Days later, she managed to connect with an English-speaking officer at the local police station who said they would increase patrols in the area. Portuguese police told the Guardian that since 2023 they had received five reports from pilgrims, all of them related to incidents of exhibitionism. None of the suspects were identified and no arrests were made, but patrols had been stepped up.
After her experience, other pilgrims opened up to her. “It was just happening everywhere around us,” she said. “It’s being looked at like an isolated incident, whereas I just know so many other people that things had happened to – it’s not an isolated issue.”
In May of last year, Martine Bergeron, a Canadian, was slowly making her way from the Spanish town of Lezama to Bilbao when she glanced up to the path ahead of her. “And what do I see? A man coming down completely naked, his genitals exposed,” she said. “I see him, and in a split second, I turn around and start running like a madwoman.”
Slowed by her backpack, her only thought was how to get out of the situation. “I feared for my life,” she said. She did not call the police or scream for help because there was no one around: she felt alone and terrified.
“I was never the same after that,” said Bergeron, 61. She started walking with other people whenever possible, but the sense of insecurity lingered. While the incident would not deter her from returning to the Camino, she said next time she would steel herself for the kinds of situations that could arise.
When 27-year-old Yasmina set off to do the pilgrimage trail by herself last year, she was already anxious about being alone in remote areas. As her trip approached, she sought to talk herself out of her fears. “I was like, so many women have done this before and I can do this alone as well.”
Her fears proved to be well founded, however. While walking towards the Spanish town of Astorga, Yasmina came across a man, his face hidden by a tree, who started to masturbate as she passed by.
Hours later in her hostel, she replayed the scene over in her head, worried that the man she had seen was a fellow pilgrim. “Is this someone who is going to sleep at the same hostel as me tonight? Or were they still walking the trail?”
The next morning she knew she did not feel safe enough to get back on the trail. Instead, with two weeks and 125 miles (200km) of route left to walk, she flew home. “I felt foolish for thinking I could do this alone, but also very angry that the world is like this,” she said.
Incidents such as masturbating in public are considered a form of sexual aggression in Spain. Most of the women who spoke to the Guardian described Spanish police as being swift to respond, though often the aggressors were nowhere to be found.
One pilgrim, however, said police did nothing to help after she came across a man who was masturbating as she walked along the outskirts of the Spanish city of Logroño last year.
“I had these walking sticks, and I remember holding them in my hands and so I could protect myself,” said Jolien Denyayer, 27. “I did call the cops and, well, actually they were of no help … they were really dismissive. I called them three times and nothing.”
Dhooma, after her ordeal of being chased in northern Spain, took the rare step of pressing charges, resulting in a Spanish court levying a fine of more than £2,510 (€3,000) against her aggressor as well as a 16-month restraining order.
“There’s only been a few select times in my life that I was afraid that this was it, that I was going to die – and that was one of those moments,” she said. “That fear that I had, I just didn’t want it to happen to anyone else. Because if I had let it go, I’m sure history would have repeated itself.”
Dhooma has since returned to the Camino, completing about 18 routes. The 2019 incident was not the first time her experience had been marred by harassment; in 2014, as she embarked on her first pilgrimage, a man exposed himself in front of her and another pilgrim.
“Up to that point, the Camino to me was this kind of magical journey I was taking. Everything was new; beautiful surroundings, wonderful people, and there wasn’t anything dark or unsettling,” she said. “And it was then I realised, OK, the Camino can be a dangerous place too.”
• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
