In the Western world, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela is one of the best known and most studied. However, certain aspects such as the accessibility of the site, travel conditions, forms of marginalisation (both implicit and explicit) and, not least, motivations constitute an interconnected complex that is difficult to understand unless one takes into account certain aspects, particularly symbolic ones, relating to the narration of the pilgrims' experience. Based on research conducted by the author, this paper aims to study, from the perspective of cultural geography, the experience of space and the Way of St James, drawing on a number of literary texts, including the autobiographical novel "La Ballade des pèlerins" by the French writer Edith De La Héronnière, first published in 1993 and translated into Italian in 2004. A comparison between this and other texts will seek to shed light on the process of meaning-making that these narratives enact as they describe the physical and symbolic space of the pilgrimage. In this way, it is possible to investigate how specific attributions of meaning inscribe the pilgrimage experience within a symbolic universe that is both personal and collective.