Sergio Perez / Reuters

Protestors shout slogans as they fill up Neptuno Square during a demonstration against government austerity measures in Madrid.

MADRID — Tens of thousands of Spaniards and Portuguese rallied in the streets of their countries’ capitals Saturday to protest enduring deep economic pain from austerity cuts.

In Madrid, demonstrators approached parliament for the third time this week to vent their anger against tax hikes, government spending cuts and the highest unemployment rate among the 17 nations that use the euro currency.

The boisterous crowds in the Spanish capital let off ear-splitting whistles near parliament and yelled ‘‘Fire them, fire them!’’ -- referring to the conservative government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Rajoy’s administration presented a 2013 draft budget on Friday that will cut overall spending by 40 billion euros ($51.7 billion), freezing the salaries of public workers, cutting spending for unemployment benefits and even reducing spending for Spain’s royal family next year by 4 percent.

Pablo Rodriguez, a 24-year-old student doing a master’s in agricultural development in Denmark, said the austerity measures and bad economy mean most of his friends in Spain are unemployed or doing work they didn’t train for.

Andres Kudacki / AP

A picture of Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is seen during the demonstration in Madrid.

Spain's unemployment rate is almost 25 percent, and more than half of people under 24 are jobless.

‘‘I would love to work here, but there is nothing for me here,’’ Rodriguez said. ‘‘By the time the economy improves it will be too late. I will be settled somewhere else with a family. One of the disasters in Spain is they spent so much to educate me and so many others and they will lose us.’’

He doubts he will put his education to use in Spain until he is 35 or 40, if ever, will probably get job abroad and stay.

In Lisbon, retired banker Antonio Trinidade said the budget cuts Portugal is locked into in return for the nation’s €78 billion ($101 billion) bailout are making the country’s economy the worst he has seen in his lifetime. His pension has been cut, and he said countless young Portuguese are increasingly heading abroad because they can’t make a living at home.

‘‘The government and the troika controlling what we do because of the bailout just want to cut more and more and rob from us,’’ Trinidade said, referring to the troika of creditors -- the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. ‘‘The young don’t have any future, and the country is on the edge of an abyss. I'm getting toward the end of my life, but these people in their 20s or 30s don’t have jobs, or a future.’’

In Spain, Rajoy has an absolute majority and has pushed through waves of austerity measures over the last nine months -- trying to prevent Spain from being forced into the same kind of bailouts taken by Portugal, Ireland and Greece.

The protests near Spain’s parliament turned violent Tuesday and Wednesday nights when protesters clashed with riot police, who barricaded entry to the streets surrounding government buildings. Dozens of people were arrested and injured.

Investors worried about Spain’s economic viability have forced up the interest rate they are willing to pay to buy Spanish bonds. The country’s banks hurting from a property boom that went bust are set to get help soon from a €100 billion ($129 billion) financial lifeline from the eurozone, and Rajoy is pondering whether to ask for help from the ECB to buy Spanish bonds.

Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro said Saturday that the budget cuts for next year were necessary to ease market tensions and try to bring down high interest rates Spain must pay to get investors to buy its bonds.

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Pascal Pavani / AFP/Getty Images

A Catholic pilgrim looks at Virgin Mary statues in a gift shop during the Feast of the Assumption on Aug. 15, 2011 in the Sanctuary of Our Lady in the French pilgrimage city of Lourdes.

LONDON -- International religious pilgrimage: the business of devotion and divinity, miracles and mysticism for millions of worshippers. It is both a life-affirming contemplation for the faithful and the lifeblood of the communities surrounding popular shrines.

Global “pilgrimage tourism” encompasses a multitude of businesses from tour operators and shrine administrators, to road-side souvenir stalls and pilgrims’ hostels.

Religious travel generates at least $8 billion a year for shrine-centered economies and provides employment for thousands, according to academics — and being able to measure the celestial and spiritual elements of pilgrimage in monetary terms is far from a modern phenomenon; it’s as ancient as the act of spiritual travel itself.

“Pilgrimage has always been commercial, as has religion,” Manchester University professor Ian Reader told CNBC. “The roots of tourism are in pilgrimage, as the first package tours in Europe were organized by Venetian merchants controlling the Mediterranean. They ran tours to the Christian Holy Land in medieval times.”

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Reader is an expert on the economics of pilgrimage. His book, “Pilgrimage in the Marketplace,” will be published in 2013.

"The contributions of pilgrims to local economies cannot be underestimated,” he stressed. “I have seen estimates that in the early 2000s, pilgrimage to San Giovanni Rotondo in Italy [the mystic saint Padre Pio's pilgrimage site] brought the town in $56.8 million in revenue — and it sustains the local economy.”

The business of saints
Indeed, destinations such as Lourdes or San Giovanni -- that have built their identity around their shrines -- call it religious branding. Entire towns are dedicated to the business of saints. Souvenir stalls, restaurants, hostels and tour operators owe their existence to the 100 million pilgrimages that take place every year.

As with much in the spiritual world, measuring the financial impact of pilgrimage is more art than science. Tourist revenues are subject to seasonal variations, and often the businesses surrounding shrines are reluctant to be seen as mercenaries.

However, tourism scholar S. Vijayanand, author of “Socio Economic Impacts in Pilgrimage Tourism,” published in the International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research in January 2012, estimates that pilgrimage tourism is worth up to $8 billion a year globally.

It’s not just spending by tourists generating economic activity. Host countries also benefit from tourist-related infrastructure projects.

Saudi Arabia has just approved a development plan costing $16.5 billion to improve transport facilities -- including a new rail line dubbed "Mecca Metro" -- for the annual 2.5 million pilgrims that visit Mecca on Hajj, the once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage duty for all able-bodies Muslims.

Slideshow: Pilgrimage to Mecca

Yahya Arhab / EPA

Muslims begin the four-day hajj celebration that draws around 2.5 million worshippers each year to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Launch slideshow

Tourist revenues also provide much of the cash flow for the Roman Catholic Church.

The Holy See — the church as an economic entity — recorded a budget shortfall of $19 million in 2011.

But the Vatican City State — the guardian of the Church’s structures and Museums, including the Sistine Chapel — enjoyed a budget surplus of nearly $22 million, thanks to the fervor of tourists.

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The Vatican might be the heartland of Catholicism’s papal leadership but devotees in search of spiritual succor may opt for Lourdes, the site of a Marian apparition – the name for appearances of Mary -- that now boasts one of the biggest shrines in the world.

“The entire economy of towns such as Lourdes is, in effect, based on pilgrimage,” Reader tells CNBC.

'Souvenir circus'
Indeed, in 2010 Lourdes’ administrators recorded employment of 30 full-time chaplains, 292 full-time lay employees and a further 120 seasonal employees, accounting for nearly four percent of the area’s total population.

They’re assisted by more than 100,000 volunteers who look after the needs of visitors, many of whom journey to Lourdes in search of miracle recoveries from crippling ailments and disabilities.

Whatever solace pilgrims draw from their sojourn, they return in the way of hard currency. Some 90 percent of Lourdes' $23 million  budget is derived from visitor donations.

Some commentators on Catholicism, such as New York Times journalist Jason Horowitz, have bemoaned the commercialism of popular shrines and souvenir stalls, describing the rows of plastic saints or cigarette lighters emblazoned with a benevolent and beatific face as belonging to a “souvenir circus.”

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But Reader of Manchester University disagrees. “Souvenirs are an intrinsic part of the pilgrimage market — without them there would be fewer pilgrims, and pilgrim places would be less lively. My studies show a livelier place attracts more pilgrims.”

The United Nation's World Travel Organization reckoned in 2007 that religious tourism, albeit a loose category, was the “fastest growing part of the travel business.”

Indeed in 2007, the Vatican’s pilgrimage office, the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi, was so keen to encourage the laity to visit shrines that it struck a five-year contract with Italian cargo airline Mistral Air and started pilgrimage charter flights around the globe under the slogan “I’m searching for your face, Lord.”

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Branding and advertising may be a very modern way of reaching today’s pilgrims but the faithful have taken to the road seeking salvation since the Crusades, said Reader.

Fast-forward a millennium, however, and the competition for pilgrims is heating up with hundreds of pilgrimage tours operating online vying to entice millions of would-be pilgrims to undertake a religious journey.

Devotees less devout?
Priests or other religious scholars often oversee the tours, adding a sense of depth and veracity to the journey. However, one priest told the National Catholic Reporter that the religious experience might be diluted by modernity and indeed, the travel.

Modern pilgrims are keener on capturing the moment on their smartphones than quietly savoring the spiritual experience, said Friar Caesar Atuire lamenting the “kind of absenteeism that's becoming very pronounced even in our pilgrimages.”

That points to a whole new target group for tourist operators marketing shrine-related packages. If devotees are perhaps becoming less devout, as it were, perhaps their more secular brethren could come to see the cultural attraction of many religious sites.

The European Commission has recently issued a report that seeks to promote pilgrimage routes as “Cultural Routes”: journeys for everyone, adherent or atheist.

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Penelope Denu, administrator of the commission’s “Cultural Routes,” told CNBC that these pilgrimage routes are not only the preserve of the ardent devotee. “More and more people are now doing these routes that have no religious connection,” she said.

Secular and cultural use of pilgrimage routes such as of the Camino de Compostela in Spain means that hundreds of thousands of visitors no longer carry the symbols of a religious pilgrim, such as a “pilgrim’s passport” or oyster shell -- a symbol synonymous with Santiago-St. James-of Compostela, to whom the route is dedicated -- along the journey.

Business is booming for hostels and firms that line the 485-mile route — an economic success that hasn't gone unnoticed by Eurovia, an association for the establishment of European pilgrimage routes, or the Italian State, which has funded a relaunch for an Italian pilgrimage route with a $12.9 million grant. 

The association is attempting to promote the lesser-traveled Via Francigena, the ancient 1,240-mile pilgrimage route from Britain to Rome that it believes could rival Spain’s Camino.

Georg Kerschbaum, president of Eurovia, told CNBC that the route is becoming more and more popular, spurring the development of infrastructure, such as sleeping accommodation, along the route.

“The Via Francigena would definitely benefit the local economy — you will get people passing through villages that would never usually be visited,” he said. “Little shops can then survive as pilgrims use the route. It’s amazing for the economy.”

Kershbaum adds that even though the Via Francigena is still not so well known, even if only 500 people a year walked it, “that would be 500 more tourists than there were before.”

Professor Reader notes that “commerce has been intrinsic in pilgrimage from the outset.”

Indeed, from the relics of religion traded for over 2000 years to the modern souvenir stalls of Lourdes or the shrine of “Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico,” the booming business of pilgrimage looks set to stay.

“One should not think that there is a distinct separation of ‘religion/pilgrimage’ and ‘money' .... Religion and pilgrimage and money go hand in hand,” Reader concluded.

This article, "Religious Sojourns Fuel Multibillion-Dollar Business," originally appeared on CNBC.com.

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A cocaine shipment spotted by customs officers in Newark, N.J., helped lead to the arrest of three people in Barcelona, Spain, U.S. officials said Friday.

Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), along with the Spanish Guardia Civil, said they arrested Oleksii Stepanets, a Ukrainian national; Eduard Medvedev, a Russian national; and Edgar Palma Bofill, a Spanish national.

Customs and Border Patrol officers at Newark Liberty International Airport intercepted a shipment of pulleys containing approximately 2.23 kilograms of cocaine on Aug. 21, ICE officials said. The shipment originated in Costa Rica and arrived in Newark on a commercial aircraft, they said. The shipment’s manifest said it was auto parts destined for an auto shop in Barcelona.

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HSI Newark agents coordinated with agents in Madrid to assist the Spanish Guardia Civil in the arrests, officials said.

Besides the arrests, police seized a total of 2.99 kilograms of cocaine and “precursor chemicals” used to process the drug, officials said.

The arrests were linked to a previous seizure of 10 kilograms of cocaine at the Newark airport, officials said.

The total wholesale value of the cocaine is over $500,000, they said.

"This cooperation with foreign governments represents HSI's broad footprint that extends beyond our border," said Andrew McLees, special agent in charge of HSI Newark.

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The investigation was the latest in a series of drug-smuggling interceptions reported by ICE. Among others, which yielded larger drug seizures:

• Two U.S. citizens were arrested and 1,048 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of $72 million were seized Aug. 6 from a boat towing a vessel off the southern coast of Puerto Rico.
• Two U.S. citizens were arrested and 450 kilograms of cocaine with a street value of $10 million were seized July 31 from a suspicious 30-foot fiberglass boat with two outboard engines sinking off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico.
• Six Dominican Republic nationals aboard a 25-foot unmarked fiberglass boat heading toward Puerto Rico were arrested and 330 kilograms and 1 kilogram of heroin with an estimated street value of $8 million were seized in early June.

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She became a viral Internet sensation last week, mocked for her botched restoration of a century-old fresco at her local church - but Cecila Giminez has still attracted a few fans.

Flowers are being left outside the elderly woman’s home in the village of Borja, north-eastern Spain, and the damaged painting has suddenly become a tourist attraction.

The 19th-century fresco, which used to depict Jesus until Giminez’s misguided intervention, is attracting so many tourists that it has now been roped off and is watched over by a security guard.

Tens of thousands of people have signed an online petition praising Giminez’s restoration as a “daring work” and even as “endearing and loving act, a clever reflection of the political and social situation of our time”.

The family of the painter, Elias Garcis Martinez, does not see it that way – especially as they had just agreed to make a donation to have the painting professionally restored.

I can paint that! Wait, no I can't! Amateur artist messes up century-old artwork

''Until now she just painted on the tunic but the problem started when she painted the head as well, because she has destroyed this painting,'' the artist’s granddaughter Teresa Garcia told Spanish television.

Giminez, who is in her 80s, said she was trying to improve the artwork, which had become damaged by moisture, and insisted she had the permission of the priest.

A team of art restoration experts is reportedly examining the painting, will quiz Giminez on what materials she used in her attempt and will figure out how best to proceed. 

In the meantime, the restoration has been mocked in a series of Internet parodies including a fake Twitter account.

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