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The coming of post-secular society has opened up interesting transdisciplinary research and perspectives. Research and academic debates on the post-secular have yet to make inroads into the discipline of tourism studies, which is ironic since there is an intrinsic religiosity to tourism. We table that tourism lies at the core of the post-secular turn and should be studied as such. Likewise, academic debate on post-secularism has not accorded tourism its proper due. This study has two objectives. First, to fill the research gap in studies of tourism and postsecularism and, second, to show that post-secular tourism is one of the key spaces where the post-secular is articulated. This article is based on interviews of pilgrims in the Galicia region (Spain) conducted in 2011, 2012 and 2014. Four major attributes of post-secular tourism were identified: (self-)reflexivity, quest for ontological security, heterodoxy and topos-disloyalty. Our findings indicate that the post-secular tourist transcends conventional dichotomies between religious pilgrimage and tourism, journeying as affirmation of denominational faith and pure leisure. Post-secular tourism is about ontogenesis, that is, it is performative rather than injunctive. It is in this sense that one can speak of post-secular tourism as something open, unfolding and in constant becoming.

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There is a growing demand for pilgrimage, which in turn seems to be linked to the change in content and performance that the practice of pilgrimage is undergoing. This paper examines the emergence of Fisterra as a “new” end destination for the pilgrims. The aim of this study is to shed light on and create understanding of the destination Fisterra and the meaning of the place and the role it plays for the pilgrims. Empirically, the study is partly based on statistics and official documents and partly on interviews with pilgrims at Fisterra. The study concludes that contemporary Fisterra as the end of the journey should be perceived as an effect of the post-secular trend in Europe as well as a response to the fact that the historical goal of Santiago de Compostela is increasingly marked by commercialised mass tourism, which is a disadvantage in the context of pilgrimage.