Monastery of Santa Clara

Anyone travelling through the province of Burgos in the footsteps of the pilgrims to Santiago will find in Belorado a place with two names. This is the Monastery of Santa Clara, which many also know as the Monastery of Nuestra Señora de Bretonera, a convent of Poor Clare nuns whose history is bound up with the Camino de Santiago.

That second name is no whim. It comes from the spot where the building was raised, a place known as Bretonera. Over time, the place name came to prevail over the dedication, and today both names coexist to refer to the same religious house. It is worth bearing this in mind when asking about it or looking for it on maps and in documents, as it is often referred to simply as the convent of La Bretonera.

Its connection with the pilgrim route also has official backing. In 2015 UNESCO approved the extension of the World Heritage property of the Camino de Santiago in Spain, which was renamed «Routes of Santiago de Compostela: Camino Francés and Routes of Northern Spain». For that nomination, Spain submitted a «Retrospective Inventory - Associated Elements», a list of sites linked to the route. On it, as number 1235, appears none other than the convent of La Bretonera.

This mention places the monastery within the vast collection of sites that give meaning to the Camino as a cultural landscape, beyond the great cathedrals and the best-known landmarks. For the traveller, pausing before its walls in Belorado is a way of understanding how, for centuries, pilgrimage relied on religious communities such as this one of Poor Clares, which form part of the shared memory of the route.