The Southern Spiritual Path through the Granada Geopark

A journey of adventure and spirituality.

The Camino Espiritual del Sur is a route on dirt roads and secondary roads with little traffic, designed for a pilgrimage that links Guadix with Caravaca de la Cruz. The historic city of Guadix is the first episcopal seat in Spain and from there you will pass through places associated with the origin of Christianity in Spain, arriving at Caravaca de la Cruz, one of the five main pilgrimage sites in the Christian world. It is a Camino promoted by different people and from different sectors, which after multiple work meetings has managed to unite a good part of the territory of the Granada Geopark around the Association of Municipalities of the Camino Espiritual del Sur, which will allow the maintenance of adequate signage of the path and the advancement of specific accommodation offers for pilgrims.

The Camino is structured in 14 stages on foot that cover 322.3 km, usually on forest tracks, agricultural roads and, on rare occasions, on asphalt or non- cycle paths , and takes advantage of multiple official signposted trails, whether local or long-distance (therefore, it is an ideal route to be done on foot or by bicycle). The different values of this unique Camino mean that it cannot be defined exclusively as a pilgrimage route, since it runs through the Granada Geopark (about 85% of the entire route is within its boundaries), which has been of great importance in the design of the layout and will allow us to pass by many of the main points of interest on it, including towns full of history with their cave house neighborhoods, castles and towers and archaeological and paleontological sites that will lead us to imagine the life of our first ancestors, in the midst of an environment totally different from today.

Within the Granada Geopark , the traveller or pilgrim will be immersed not only in the geological understanding of the different landscapes found within the Granada Geopark , which are shown to us as an ‘educational sheet’, but also in the understanding of human evolution itself through its passage through important archaeological sites and areas where ancestors settled and lived together for millennia. In this way, whatever your motivation: sporting, cultural and/or religious-spiritual, the unique experience that the Camino will leave you with will leave an unforgettable impression.