Calle Santa María Real de Nieva

Behind this name is an image drawn from the earth. The Segovian town of Santa María la Real de Nieva owes its existence to a carving of the Virgin that, as the story goes, appeared to a shepherd named Pedro in a slate quarry near old Nieva, in September 1392. The name was fixed by the place of the find: La Soterraña, the one that was underground. The bishop of Segovia came to the quarry, dug with his hands, and beneath a great slab appeared a hollow with the image. Catherine of Lancaster, queen of Castile, took the event as a miracle: she ordered first a hermitage and then a Dominican monastery, and in 1395 signed the town’s founding charter, granting privileges to draw settlers. The street belongs to a corner of the Imperial neighborhood where several streets recall towns of the province of Segovia.