A little history…

We baptize this road with the name of the ‘Discoverers’ after the characters who contributed to the exploration, conquest and subsequent colonization of the lands of the New World. Many pilgrims from Extremadura and Portugal, a nation historically as closely linked to Guadalupe as Spain itself, came through it. For this reason and for the use of this path by our protagonists who came from Seville along the Vía de la Plata, crossing cities such as Mérida, Cáceres or Trujillo, it has come to be called the path full of legends and stories. Many of our discoverers are associated with these cities, since they were born or lived in one of them, such as Francisco Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana, natives of Trujillo, Hernán Cortés from Medellín, a town near Mérida, or Juan Cano de Saavedra. , Francisco de Godoy and Mencía de los Nidos, in Cáceres. The Monastery of Guadalupe is linked to the American expeditions and would become a pilgrimage center and a meeting place for these men in the creation of their overseas adventure. Most of them, on their return, paid emotional tribute to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Illustrious personalities associated and consecrated Guadalupe in multiple conquered places, such as the invocation assigned to one of the three caravels that discovered the New World, Santa María, or the foundation of the island of Guadalupe by Christopher Columbus in the Minors Antilles area. Towards the end of the 16th century, the devotion to María de Guadalupe had spread throughout South America, receiving large donations from the sanctuaries that were erected. Knowing the Jerónimos that the conquerors were from Extremadura, they took their great devotion to María de Guadalupe of Extremadura for granted, believing that the devotion of Guadalupe in America was nothing more than an extension of the Spanish one. An emblematic figure linked to Guadalupe is Admiral Christopher Columbus, the great discoverer of the New World, who visited the sanctuary several times to meet with the Catholic Monarchs with the aim of getting them to finance his company. When Columbus came to Guadalupe in 1496, two of his servants were baptized in the basin that exists in the sanctuary square. Columbus offered Our Lady a silver lamp and several gold jewels (as it appears in the Book of Benefactors of Guadalupe, manuscript ninety of the Royal Archive of the Monastery).