Caravaca de la Cruz, a city in a state of grace

With another desire far from Religion but also embedded in spirituality, “in the places that connect heaven with earth”, Aisa Ayoubi and Mercedes, retirees living in Gerona, have spent the night with their caravan parked in Caravaca, already hour they begin the climb to the castle seeking their peace. The same impulse that pushes Ecuadorians Margot Torres and her husband to travel with their car from Torre Pacheco to attend the Eucharist in the Basilica that preserves part of the Lignum Crucis, which was first kept by the Knights Templar and, after their disappearance, by the Order of Santiago. “We are very believers and we want to make the journey as soon as we can find days,” they say while choosing a Caravaca cross in the souvenir shop to send to their family in Ecuador.

Every seven years, the city of the Cross is the destination of thousands of visitors and pilgrims who come to the Basilica to meet the Sacred Relic, and the couple wants to join the million visitors – almost double that of the previous Jubilee Year – who They are waiting this year in Caravaca. Some figures that the president of the Community, Fernando López Miras, reviewed after completing, with the delegation, the climb up the Castillo slope with the musical push of the pasodobles of the Caravaca Musical Group: «They would leave an economic impact on the region of the Northwest of more than 200 million euros, and more than 2,000 jobs. Caravaca is today the center of Christianity.

María del Mar and Antonia García, mother and daughter who own the Isi tavern, the oldest in Caravaca de la Cruz, trust that this will be the case, which every seven years regains joy with the pilgrimage of thousands of devotees. “We notice it very much, it is a different joy that we can expect every seven years,” and that started at nine this morning with the general ringing of bells from all the churches, convents and hermitages of the urban center and the districts, which joined to a 'sound hallelujah' crowned by thousands of rockets from the castle esplanade that exploded at the same time to announce the beginning of the Jubilee.

In the Basilica everything was ready to begin a year of religious celebration around which a special cultural program has been prepared and an economic, tourist and social project will be developed to strengthen the Region of Murcia as a top-level national and international religious destination. . The Jubilee Year 2024 is called to turn Caravaca de la Cruz, the holy city in the Northwest of Murcia, into the central axis of religious tourism throughout the country. The promotional campaign for the jubilee, under the title 'Believe in the extraordinary', invites you to undertake “a unique journey to one of the five holy cities of Christianity, and the home of one of the most revered sacred relics.” Luis Antolinos, a resident of Cehegín, has already completed it alone. “It is an intimate moment, of reconnection,” he says as the authorities enter the council room to sign the book of honor. It is done by the archbishop of Granada, José María Gil Tamayo; López Miras, and the mayor of Caravaca, José Francisco García, host in his land and happy to experience a historic day for his people, who receive a replica of the Caravaca cross that Saint Teresa wore in her habit.

In the atrium, fifty seminarians prepare a procession that inaugurates the Eucharist that begins a time of grace in which thousands of pilgrims from different parts of the world are expected to travel the different pilgrimage routes and reach the Basilica of the True Cross for the encounter with the Sacred Relic. The Jubilee Year of Caravaca is considered the most important religious event in our country during the year 2024, and Caravaca de la Cruz is one of the five holy cities in the world, along with Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and Santo Toribio de Liébana.