Santiago y el Camino
en los mapamundis medievales
The growing importance acquired by Santiago de Compostela during the Middle Ages due to its conversion into a Christian pilgrimage destination has been graphically captured in medieval cartography. Santiago, its cathedral and the Way itself, appear prominently in a large part of the schematic medieval mapamundis, a type of map in which the concern for geographical rigour was far below the importance of symbolic representation. Throughout the article, several ancient cartographic examples of the figure of the apostle St. James, the associated toponym, his cathedral or the Way are reviewed, using this fact as a link with the history of cartography.
Technical engineer in topography and engineer in geodesy and cartography from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, I joined the General State Administration as a career civil servant in 1999. Since then I have held various positions in the National Geographic Institute, in the Ministry of the Environment and in the National Centre for Geographic Information. I currently belong to the corps of geographic engineers of the AGE and hold the post of head of the Central Cartographic Register Area at the IGN.