The Holy Cave of Covadonga, high in the mountains of Asturias, has been a place of prayer for many centuries and is bound in Asturian memory to Pelayo and the resistance that began there in the eighth century. The image venerated in the cave replaced an earlier one destroyed by fire, and the basilica below the cave was built in the nineteenth century for the pilgrims. Our Lady of Covadonga, affectionately called La Santina, is honoured as patroness of Asturias, and her feast is kept on 8 September, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

A shrine so tied to national memory needs the caution Ecclesia in Europa gives: Christian roots are received as a call to conversion, not as a claim of possession, and Marian devotion must never be enlisted as a badge of ethnic or political triumph. Read rightly, Covadonga proclaims that faith survives in caves and among the poor, and that its endurance is God's work and not a nation's achievement.

September 8

Spain (Asturias)

A small standing Virgin with the Child on her left arm, crowned and vested, set in the mouth of the cave above a waterfall so that pilgrims see her framed by rock and falling water. Copies keep the crown, the white and blue vesting, and the flowers Asturians bring her.

• La Santina
• Virgen de Covadonga
• Nuestra Señora de Covadonga

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