Soria

Welcome to Soria. Soria, Romanesque, Renaissance and Baroque. The Soria of succession and barbican, the land written with the pens of Bécquer, Machado, Gerardo Diego, Gaya Nuño and Unamuno, authors of a literary cartography that follows a multiple route in body and letter. A quiet city, made for humanity. Its heart beats quietly and serenely, its lungs are huge, clean and full of oxygen. Its heads is laden with cultural life and its main artery flows like a river that is still young, but calm as it surrounds the city. Its spirit is found in the verses of a triumvirate of poets and the walls of its former monasteries and modern-day convents. Soria is… Pure life.

St Teresa of Jesus stayed in Soria for a short period, but her time here has lasted from the spiritual point of view, consolidated from 1581 to present day with the foundation of the Monastery of the Barefoot Carmelites in the city.

The Carmelite Monastery of Soria was founded thanks to St Teresa’s direct intervention when she arrived in the city in 1581 in response to a request by Bishop Don Alonso Velázquez, her confessor when he was Canon of the Cathedral of Toledo in 1576.

Teresa of Jesus recorded her presence in Soria in chapter 30 of her Book of Foundations and, thanks to the same publication, we also know that she left Palencia on 29 May and arrived in Soria on 2 June 1581.

At that time, Soria was a walled city with many churches and a few shrines, convents and monasteries that stood as proof of the city’s profound belief in religion.

The convent was officially opened on 14 June 1581 and since then the nuns have remained in the monastery to present day, except for brief periods of absence as a result of the arrival of the French in 1808. They have remained in Soria thanks, among other things, to the attraction the foundation had for women of a certain social class and religious concerns.

St Teresa departed from Soria on 16 August 1581 and left an indelible mark on the city.