What is the Camino Memory Project?
Every year, thousands of memories of the Camino are lost. Photographs remain in boxes, films on old tapes and hard drives, diaries are forgotten, and personal stories disappear with the people who carry them.
The Camino Memory Project was created to preserve these memories in one shared archive — a place where the human history of the Camino can be remembered, studied and explored by future generations.
The Film of a Collective Journey
Selected materials from the Camino Memory Archive will become part of an international feature documentary directed by award-winning film director Jesús Garcés Lambert.
Built from the images, voices and personal recordings of pilgrims from different countries, generations and decades, the film will tell the collective story of the Camino: the physical journey, the encounters, the difficulties, the moments of doubt, faith and hope, and the transformations that happen along the way.
Contributors whose material is selected for the film will be credited in the final credits and invited to the film’s premiere in Santiago de Compostela, planned for Xacobeo 2027.
Jesús Garcés Lambert is an award-winning filmmaker with more than 25 years of experience telling human stories through documentaries and films. His work has been broadcast in more than 180 countries, reaching over 160 million viewers worldwide, and has received multiple international awards and recognitions.
After walking the Camino de Santiago himself, he became interested in the enormous number of personal records created by pilgrims over the years: photographs, home movies, diaries, letters, audio recordings and, more recently, videos and phone diaries.
He discovered that, despite the cultural and human significance of this material, there is no single archive dedicated to bringing these personal testimonies together and preserving them for the future.
That discovery led him to create The Camino Memory Project: an initiative to find, collect and preserve this material before it is lost, creating a shared record of the Camino that can be remembered, studied and explored by generations to come.
Your memories, your rights
We believe that preserving the memory of the Camino also means respecting the people who entrust their memories to us.
The material you share remains yours. You retain ownership of your photographs, videos, audio recordings, writings and any other original material contributed to the Camino Memory Archive.
By contributing, you grant permission for your material to be preserved in the archive and, where selected, used for the documentary film and for cultural, educational, exhibition and promotional activities directly related to the project.
Your personal information will not be published or shared with third parties. The information collected through the contribution form is used only to identify, catalogue and manage the material you submit.