Monastery of the Santa Faz: the face that walks with Alicante

Five thirty in the morning in Alicante. The Concatedral de San Nicolás is still locked, but lights flicker behind the windows. On Calle Mayor, the first families tie the checked mocador around their necks and check whether the black blusón will hold for 8 kilometers of slow walking. It is the second Thursday after Holy Thursday. The city is about to empty itself northwards.

The destination has several faces at once: relic, monastery, hamlet and shared dawn. They all share one name, Santa Faz. And in 2026 that walking officially crossed five centuries of continuity: on 17 April, the day after the pilgrimage, the Consell of the Generalitat Valenciana published the decree that declares the Romería an immaterial Bien de Interés Cultural.

A March tear, an April promise

The official story begins on 17 March 1489. That year the Levantine huerta had gone months without rain. The cabildo of Alicante, desperate, organised a rogativa. The procession set out from San Nicolás carrying a cloth recently arrived from Rome: it had been brought by mossén Pere Mena, parish priest of the church of Santa María, after a journey to the Holy See. An anonymous cardinal had handed it to him on the single condition that he look after it.

The column stopped at the barranquet of Lloixa, on the outskirts of the city, on the plot where the monastery now stands. There, according to the chronicles, a tear sprang from the right eye of the face and rolled down the cheek of the cloth. Thousands saw it. The owner of the land donated the plot to the Church in gratitude, and a first hermitage rose there.

The cloth that was one of three

Catholic tradition holds that the cloth of the Santa Faz is one of the three folds of the veil with which Veronica wiped the face of Christ at Calvary. Each fold is said to have preserved the imprinted image, and the three are recognised by the Holy See. One is kept in the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome. Another, the Santo Rostro, in the cathedral of Jaén. The third is here, in a hamlet of the Alicante huerta.

The iconography of the miracle is called "Las Tres Faces" and the facade of the monastery is the only one in the entire province that depicts it visually: three identical faces above the baroque portal. A small detail that almost no one looks at on the Thursday of the romería, exhausted, waiting their turn to enter.

A building that changed orders three times

The monastery you see today is from the 18th century, raised in ashlar with a two-tier facade and the full vocabulary of Alicante baroque from the seventeen hundreds: pairs of solomonic and straight columns, curving cornices, pinnacles. The church has a single nave with four chapels between buttresses, a transept with a cupola and a flat apse. Behind the main altarpiece, an octagonal camarín holds the cloth: it was decorated by Juan Conchillos Falcó, a Valencian painter of the 17th century.

Of the original 16th-century building only the tower remains, rising on the eastern side of the cloister next to the kitchen-garden patio. The rest grew and was renewed with each change of religious community: Jeronymites at first, then Franciscan Clarisas from 1518, sent from Gandía. That Clarisa custody lasted nearly five hundred years, until in 2019 the community, by then very small, handed over the baton. On 2 July of that year the Canonesses Regular of the Lateran of Saint Augustine took possession, coming from the nearby Monastery of the Most Precious Blood of Christ in Alicante. The Holy See formalised the transfer on 29 July 2020. Today people call them the Monjas de la Sangre.

Eight kilometers in a black blusón

The romería starts at eight in the morning at San Nicolás. The column moves down Calle Miguel Soler, turns into Calle San Nicolás, swings onto Calle Mayor, crosses the plaza Santísima Faz (where a chapel keeps a replica), rejoins Calle Mayor, climbs through Villavieja and Virgen del Socorro until it links with Avenida de Dénia. From there, the Alicante-Valencia road towards the hamlet. Eight kilometers. Two hours, at a pilgrim's pace.

Anyone who walks too long without tying their shoes properly finds it out at kilometer three, at the "paraeta". This is the official rest stop: a strip of marquees opposite the Vistahermosa complex where the council sets up refreshments between seven and half past eleven. There the mistela rolls go round, sweet anise, muscat wine in small glasses and freshly baked bread. It is wise to eat little. Five kilometers still remain and a sun that begins to weigh.

2026: the year the peregrina entered the inventory

On 16 April 2026 around 330,000 people walked, some 20,000 fewer than in 2025 but still the second largest pilgrimage in Spain, behind only El Rocío in Almonte. The next day, Friday, the Consell approved the decree that declares it an immaterial Bien de Interés Cultural. Management of the new BIC is shared between the Ayuntamiento de Alicante and the Diocese of Orihuela-Alicante, and the entry passes to the General Inventory of Valencian Cultural Heritage and to the General Registry of Goods of Cultural Interest of the Ministry of Culture.

The recognition arrived after four years of paperwork and a favourable verdict from the Consell Valencià de Cultura in January. It does not change the liturgy or the route. It does shield the cloth, the pilgrimage and the offices celebrated from Thursday to Sunday, the whole cycle that in Alicante is known simply as "Santa Faz".

The neighborhood that lives all year

The hamlet where the monastery sits is officially called Santa Faz and is split between Alicante and Sant Joan d'Alacant: an invisible line cuts the very square in two. Outside the romería only a small community lives there, in low houses with orange-tree patios and a couple of streets that wrap around the caserío. The basilica opens every morning and the nuns keep the office of their contemplative life. If you look in on any other day, away from the Thursday of the peregrina, you understand what kind of silence the place keeps the rest of the year.

It is that contrast that sustains the festival. A small hamlet that lives twelve months with the cloth, and a city that one Thursday a year tousles its hair to come and see it. The tear that sprang in March 1489 is still printed on the cheek of the face. The huerta that was dying of thirst then is asphalt, urbanisation and supermarket today. But the dawn walking continues, just as slow, just as stubborn.

At ESYS VIP we help you explore the northern arc of Alicante, from the Albufereta and Cabo de las Huertas to the inland hamlets. If you would like to know the homes available a short walk from the Monastery of the Santa Faz, you can explore our properties or contact us and we will go with you to see them.