Introduction. General view of the sanctuary, in front of the Andía mountain range.

The Sanctuary of San Miguel in Excelsis, located on a slight platform of the Aralar mountain range, at an altitude of 1355 meters, offers a splendid panoramic view of the Barranca corridor and the Andía and Urbasa mountain ranges. The panorama is spectacular; one of the most beautiful and suggestive of our community. It is located about 50 km from Pamplona, with a main access by road from Lekunberri (about 17 km. from the Pamplona-San Sebastián highway), and a secondary access from Uharte Arakil and the monastery of Zamartze (about 11 km. from the Pamplona-Gazteiz highway).

This is a unicum, where faith, spirituality, art, history and an extraordinary intangible heritage come together to form an area that transcends disciplines and must be faced as a rich and multifaceted totum, in which everything adds up. As in other ancestral sanctuaries perched almost in the sky, the historical and the legendary enjoy their own spaces and times.

And as a foundation, the myth is instituted. Back in the eighth century, Teodosio de Goñi, a Basque nobleman, blind with jealousy, accidentally murders his parents. He sought forgiveness in a pilgrimage to Rome, and upon his return, he retired as a hermit, burdened with chains, survived with difficulty on the heights of Aralar. One day in the year 714, a dragon attacked him from the thick forest. Theodosius invokes St. Michael, who appears, slays the monster and breaks the chains. Released from penance, the hermit builds a chapel in honor of the archangel.