The story
Fiestas Patronales de Armenia in Armenia
Armenia, in Sonsonate department, holds its fiestas patronales from November 16 to 24 in honor of Santa Teresa de Avila, the sixteenth-century Carmelite reformer and mystic. The town is also the birthplace of celebrated Salvadoran poet Claudia Lars, whose childhood home near the central park adds a literary layer to the November festivities.
In the hills of Sonsonate department, the town of Armenia spends the second half of November honoring an unlikely patron for rural El Salvador: Santa Teresa de Avila, the Spanish Carmelite nun who reformed her order in the sixteenth century and became one of the first women named a Doctor of the Church for her writings on prayer and contemplation.