Lady of Altagracia Day in Dominican Republic

Our Lady of Altagracia or Virgen de la Altagracia is a Catholic Marian devotion considered as the "protective and spiritual mother of the Dominican people". Her patronal feast is on January 21, a holiday/non-working day in the Dominican Republic in which many faithful devotees of the Virgin concur from all over the Dominican territory to the basilica of Higüey, in the province of La Altagracia.

Some historians and parish priests of the Catholic Church mention that from May 12, 1502 the image is taken to a parish in the Villa de Salvaleón de Higüey, under the orders of the bishop of Santo Domingo, García Padilla, since at that time the Trejo brothers, Alonso and Antonio, who came from Plasencia, a town in the Autonomous Community of Extremadura, Spain with family in Garrovillas de Alconetar, had arrived in Higüey; It was in Extremadura in the town of Garrovillas de Alconetar, according to history, where the Virgin Mary appeared to a little shepherd girl on top of a rock. The girl took the small image in her bag to the hut but the next morning it had disappeared and reappeared on the same rock. The girl tried to take the image several times but the same thing always happened until the local people heard the story and when they dug under the rock they found the image that is venerated today in the hermitage that was built in her honor.