Chueca proposes to take advantage of the Jubilee 2025 to promote religious tourism in Zaragoza

The Mayor of Zaragoza , Natalia Chueca , held a meeting this morning in Rome (Italy) with the Minister Counselor of the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, Eduardo López Busquets, to whom she conveyed the interest of the Aragonese capital to promote and encourage the external projection of the city as a focus of religious tourism.

Chueca recalled that “in 2025 the Jubilee will be celebrated in Rome , attracting more than 30 million visitors from all over the world to the Italian capital”, a tourist niche that opens up as “a great opportunity for Zaragoza to show all its offering, its traditions and its heritage linked to religious tourism”. “We wanted to take advantage of this meeting at the Embassy to begin to open proposals where Zaragoza can be present at this event and thus show our monuments, our Holy Week, the Fiestas del Pilar, the Offering to the Virgin or the Rosary of Crystal, among other aspects”, Chueca said.

“We want to establish lines of collaboration so that next year we can have a presence of Zaragoza in Rome, with our heritage, social and cultural offer focused on religious tourism ,” explained the Mayor of Zaragoza, who explained that all actions must be coordinated with the Zaragoza Tourism Office, the national tourism plans, the Archbishopric of Zaragoza and even the Zaragoza Brotherhoods.

Along these lines, Chueca recalled that the city of Zaragoza received in 2023, according to data collected by Zaragoza Tourism, nearly 1.2 million visitors , of which between 65 and 70% come for its monumental heritage as the first reason, highlighting the visit and religious tourism to the Basilica del Pilar , but also to La Seo, “thanks to the magnificent situation of having two cathedrals in the same square”.

MARIAN ROUTE

In this regard, Zaragoza is part of and participates in the promotion and revitalization of the religious-tourist route of the ” Marian Route “, created within the framework of the Zaragoza 2008 International Exposition, where it was concretized, under the auspices of the Vatican Pavilion, in the constitution of an association of its own route that includes El Pilar in Zaragoza, Torreciudad in Barbastro, Monserrat in Barcelona, ​​Meritxell in the Principality of Andorra and Lourdes in France. According to studies carried out by the Association for the Promotion of the Marian Route (APRM), the expenditure produced by tourists who visited Aragon for religious reasons reached a total of 187 million Euros: 105 direct, 44 indirect, and 38 induced.

This line of work and promotion of Zaragoza has been one of the topics addressed by Natalia Chueca with Eduardo López, whom the Mayor of Zaragoza wanted to thank for the “interesting and fruitful” meeting and has valued the “great work carried out by the Spanish Diplomatic Corps”.

Chueca and López also discussed “the open door that the Pope has left open for visits to Spain and Zaragoza ”, and exchanged information to find out “the steps and details that the organisation of an event of this nature would entail if it were to take place in the coming months or years”. “All the institutions want the Pope to visit Spain and in that case we are all willing to lend and work in mutual and coordinated collaboration, with great interest”, Natalia Chueca stressed.