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In spring 2006, Paulo Coelho travelled to Santiago de Compostela to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his first pilgrimage there in 1986. He also held surprise book-signings - announced one day in advance - in some cities along the way, to have a chance to meet his readers. In the ninety days of this pilgrimage the author travelled round the globe and caught the famous Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. During this time Coelho launched a 4-language blog, "Walking the Path", in order to share his impres sions with his readers. This later developed into his present multilingual blog www.paulocoelhoblog.com, which has since grown exponentially.

Through his blog, readers can post their comments on his work, accompany him throughout the world and see what his daily life is like through his own photos. This blog is fed on a daily base from a number of different sources: Daily Message, Today's Question, Quote of the Day, News, Youtube videos, Free Downloads, Cards and the following highlights:

Discussion Forum

In this forum Coelho provides an open space in which to debate current affairs and a series of topics closest to his heart, such as: torture, religious wars, xenophobia, marriage, prayers, counselling, grief and daily miracles.

Reader’s Corner for The Witch of Portobello

Before the actual publication of his latest novel, The Witch of Portobello, Coelho took the unusual step of posting the first 11 chapters of the novel on his blog, to give the readers a space to debate and let them give their opinion on the book. So far, this event has expanded the blog to 13 different languages and has attracted as many as 1 million visitors. This novel is also the origin of an unprecedented film project called The Experimental Witch.

The Experimental Witch

Throughout his career as a writer, Coelho has been trusted and helped by people who did not know him well, but who enabled him to follow his dreams. As a symbolic way of returning these favours and offering new opportunities to other artists, he has invited the filmmakers and musicians among his readers to make a film adaptation of his latest book.

Each filmmaker is asked to choose a character from the novel and shoot all the scenes in which that character interacts with the heroine, Athena, and in the case of musicians, they are asked to compose a theme based on one of the 15 characters. The author will retain the rights to the film and in exchange will promote it at festivals and on the Internet. This project has stirred imaginations and been picked by such major newspapers as The Times (UK) and the EFE press agencies.