"The statue of San Pedro de Alcántara is located in the Plaza de Santa María, next to the Co-Cathedral of Santa María. The bronze sculpture is characteristic for having golden toes, due to the devotion on the part of the believers, who kiss their feet out of respect. It is a self-portrait of the sculptor Enrique Pérez Comendador made in 1954."
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"San Pedro de Alcántara, OFM , ( Alcántara , 1499 - Arenas de San Pedro , October 18, 1562 ) was a Spanish Franciscan friar . His real name was Juan de Garavito y Vilela de Sanabria . He dies at the age of 63. He was beatified by Pope Gregory XV in 1622 and canonized by Clement IX in 1669 .
Biography
He was born into a noble family. His parents, Alonso Garabito and María Vilela de Sanabria y Maldonado, lived in Villaturiel , a town near León, in the mid-15th century, in a house located to the left of the main door of the hermitage, if we stand in front of it. . After a course in grammar and philosophy in his native town, he was sent to study law at the University of Salamanca . He abandons his studies and takes the habit in 1515 at the convent of San Pedro de los Majarretes , near Valencia de Alcántara , where he takes the name of Fray Pedro de Alcántara.
He founded the smallest convent in the world, El Palancar , near Pedroso de Acim . He was a friend and counselor of Saint Teresa of Jesus . Called by Carlos I in his retreat from Yuste to be his confessor, the saint from Alcantara declined said proposal. Known above all for his penance, he dazzled the masses with his oratory. He reduced Fray Luis de Granada 's Book of Prayer and Meditation to the portable and popular version of it, the Treatise on Prayer and Meditation .
This life of contemplation was not an obstacle to being in contact with many people through letters and even to making long trips, generally on foot, especially through Extremadura and Portugal. There are testimonies of an interview with Carlos I in Yuste. Wherever he went he left his trail of holiness, he walked barefoot, and the prodigies that occurred around him were told, such as passing the Tiétar over the waters, not getting wet in the middle of a storm or the fact that the snow formed a small cavity around him. around in the port of Pico when he was returning from a trip to Ávila.
In 1560 he meets Santa Teresa at the house of Guiomar de Ulloa and discusses the foundation of the convent of Arenas, after having previously completed those of the convent of La Viciosa and Rosario in terms of Oropesa. Pedro de Alcántara reassures and reassures the spirit of Teresa de Jesús, and a deep and sincere friendship arises between the two saints: henceforth, he is the faithful adviser of the saint and the one who guides her and gives her the definitive impulse to initiate the reform of Carmel with the foundation of the convent of San José de Ávila; and Fray Pedro opens his heart to Mother Teresa, who will be his first biographer, dedicating three chapters of his Autobiography to him.
It is probably on the occasion of this trip, on his way to Ávila, when Pedro de Alcántara knows in Arenas (currently Arenas de San Pedro ) the hermitage of San Andrés del Monte, just over two kilometers from the town. Built in the first third of the 16th century, this was a small building of just over thirty square metres, in Elizabethan Gothic style. The Arenense brotherhood of San Andrés offers it to him for the foundation of a new convent of its reform. The chronicles say that the saint liked the place so much that he exclaimed: "God has great designs on this place."
From now on Arenas and its region will experience the riches of the apostolate and the example of the life of Fray Pedro, who established his residence in Arenas in the spring of 1562. He traveled, on a donkey, to Ávila, Oropesa and to the convent of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, located in the vicinity of the current Rosarito reservoir. While the small convent was being built, he lived in a house that had the brotherhood of the same name in the town and that later became an infirmary.
As his illness worsened, on October 12 he was taken to Arenas, where he wanted to receive death surrounded by his brothers, among whom: García Garabito , María Villela and Pedro Barrantes Maldonado on his mother's side. 9 At dawn on October 18, happy to see himself already leaving for Glory, after apologizing to his body for the harshness and rigor with which he had treated him all the time of his life, he began to pray the psalm « miserere”, remaining absorbed in the contemplation of the Trinity and the Virgin Mary. Returning to himself, and saying: «What joy when they told me, let's go to the house of the Lord!», He gave up his spirit.
The news of his death spread immediately throughout the region. The people of Arenas and its surroundings came en masse to say their last goodbye to the one whose company, friendship, spiritual favors and testimony of life they had enjoyed, and whom everyone considered holy.
He is buried in the church of the convent then called San Andrés del Monte. On the occasion of his beatification, the town declared him patron saint in 1622, and he vowed to have October 19 of each year as a holiday in perpetuity."
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