El Rocio 2020 pilgrimage El Rocio departure from Sanlucar de Barrameda El Rocio information for Sanlucar 2020


	El Rocio 2020 Information on the remarkable El Rocio pilgrimage and what happens in Sanlucar.

El Rocio

4 June 2025 till 9 June 2025

The departure of the Romeros de Rocio will take place on Wednesday & Thursday before the dates mentioned above in Sanlucar de Barrameda, at the Bajo de Guia, don't forget your camera.

Andalucia is famous for its pilgrimages or "romerías" (so called because pilgrims traditionally walked to Rome and they became known as "romeros") to popular shrines, around which fiestas are held.

Perhaps the most spectacular is the one devoted to the Virgen del Rocío, popularly called "El Rocio" for short. Nearly a million people from all over Spain and Andalucia make the long journey to gather in a small hamlet of El Rocio in the marshlands of the Guadalquivir River delta (south of Almonte), where the statue of the "Madonna of the Dew" has been worshipped since 1280.

The pilgrims come on horseback and in gaily decorated covered wagons from all over the region, transforming the area into a colourful and noisy party. The climax of the festival is the weekend before Pentercost Monday. In the early hours of the Monday the Virgin is brought out of the church. This remarkable event is always televised on Canal Sur the Andalucian regional Television.

El Rocio photographs

El Rocio dancing

Dancing in the streets.

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El Rocio story

The legend tells of a hunter who went deep into the Rocinas, a dense area of bushes and forests. There he found the image of a Virgin stuck among some fallen tree trunks. With great effort, he managed to free the image from the fallen trunks and carried it out on his back for several miles. As the image was very heavy, he got tired and stopped for a rest, falling asleep. When he woke up, he noticed with amazement that the image had disappeared. He went back to where he had found it and could not believe his eyes when he saw it back in the same place where he had taken it from, in between the fallen tree trunks. He assumed then that the Virgin wanted her temple to be erected right there and nowhere else.

Nowadays, apart from the romería which is celebrated each year with the beginning of spring, when the hot weather appears on the Andalusian landscape, five hundred years later, this legend is still remembered. Every seven years, the image of the Virgin at El Rocío is taken at night in a procession to Almonte. As she enters the village, she is welcomed by the sound of shotguns, honouring the hunter who found her.

Every year there a pilgrimage to El Rocío in which over 1.5 million people from all over Spain take part. The highlight of this pilgrimage is during the weekend of Pentecost.

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