Our Lady of Solitude

Patrona de Badajoz

In her hermitage of the center of Badajoz, the Virgin of Soledad, dressed in mourning, is the patron of the city; canonically crowned in 2013, her Holy Thursday procession is one of the most intense moments of pacense piety.

Origin and history

The image of Soledad reaches Badajoz in the 17th century, around 1661, and soon becomes the center of the Marian devotion of the city. The hermitage that hosts it was raised at the expense of the Duke of San Germán, who established it definitively at his new headquarters in 1664. The tradition attributes to the Duke the order of the image to workshops of his native Naples - or, in another version, of Barcelona - but without primary documentation to confirm it.

Despite the border wars with Portugal, devotion to the Soledad grew to assume in fact the patronage of the city, which it shares with Saint John the Baptist and the Virgin of Bótoa. It was crowned canonically in Badajoz Cathedral on June 8, 2013. His painful iconography - dressed in black, in the mourning of the Mother at the foot of the cross - and his Holy Thursday procession express a very deep popular piety; his feast is September 15.