Covadonga 2024

In July 2024 the group made a pilgrimage on foot to Covadonga, the shrine of the Santina, in Asturias. 60 people went: 59 pilgrims split into four groups, A to D, and Fr Ferran. Before they started walking they went by coach to the Pilar, in Zaragoza, and to Begoña, in Bilbao.

Eleven stages along the coast

From Bilbao to Covadonga it is 290.6 kilometres, and the pilgrim’s book divided them into eleven stages along the Cantabrian coast: Castro Urdiales, Treto, Valdecilla, Santander (a “rest” stage, of 17 kilometres), Torrelavega, Ruiloba, Colombres, La Paz, Ribadesella —the longest, 42.8 kilometres—, Cangas de Onís and, to finish, the 15 kilometres to Covadonga.

With St Pedro Poveda

Each day, the book carried a letter written as if it were signed by St Pedro Poveda, the founder of the Teresian Association, who had been a canon of Covadonga: born in Linares in 1874, he began with the families who lived in the caves of Guadix and died a martyr on 27 July 1936. From each episode of his life the letter drew a lesson: the Eucharist as the centre of the day, the cross, not pushing God out of your own life, confession. Alongside the letters, reflections on prayer and inner peace, the saint of the day and Compline each night.

The pilgrimage was set out as a way to purify the heart, lived as a group and hand in hand with Mary, ending at Covadonga with the offering to Our Lady of the sacrifices of the way. The arrival letter encouraged them to live as an “apostle of Jesus” and not to let what they had lived fall into oblivion.