The iconic mountain of Montserrat will host a stage finish of the Volta a Catalunya for the third time in its history, after the editions of 1995 and 1960. The last of these, in 1995, was a stage starting in Manlleu and finishing in the Monastery of Montserrat, with victory for the French cyclist Laurent Jalabert, one of the most charismatic riders of the 1990s, who won the overall classification of that edition. The first of these dates back to 1960, in a time trial that linked Monistrol de Montserrat with the Monastery and was won by the Mallorcan Antonio Karmany, one of the best climbers of the time.
- Region: Bages
- Population Monistrol de Montserrat (2024, Idescat): 3.188
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This year, 2025, we will commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the foundation of the monastery of Montserrat by Oliba, abbot of Ripoll and Cuixà and bishop of Vic. History tells us that as early as the year 880 there was a small hermitage dedicated to the Virgin Mary on the mountain of Montserrat. It was not until a few decades later, in 1025, that a group of monks from Ripoll, sent by their abbot, built a Benedictine monastery next to the aforementioned hermitage. Thus was born the monastery of Montserrat, which has always been marked by this double aspect: Benedictine monastery and Marian sanctuary. In other words, a place of prayer, evangelical life, pilgrimage, and hope.
The fact that the founder was the abbot and bishop Oliba, one of the most important promoters of peace in the Middle Ages, has deeply marked the monastery of Montserrat throughout its history. For a thousand years, Montserrat has sought to be a place of welcome and encounter, a place of listening, understanding, and peace. Thus, the imprint of its founder strengthened the charism that Benedictine monks have tried to live since the beginning of the Middle Ages, in the wine century. Not in vain, one of their main mottos has always been: Pax! A simple but profound motto.
The Benedictine monastic life was eloquently summarised on 24 October 1964 by Pope Paul VI in the Apostolic Letter Pacis nuntius, in which he proclaimed St. Benedict as the patron saint of Europe. He said in this text that St. Benedict and his sons brought Christian progress ‘with the cross, with the book, and with the plough’. The cross, the book, and the plough. Three symbols that over the course of a thousand years have also been forged in the monastery of Montserrat, not to be enclosed within the walls of the monastery but to be shared with the whole of society.
Indeed, throughout hundreds of generations of monks, the monastery of Montserrat has worked with the cross, a sign of faith and spirituality; with the book, a sign of culture and thought; and with the plough, a sign of social construction and progress. And it has done so with the will to be rooted in the land that has seen it born but which at the same time has opened it up to the world. Rooted in the land and open to the world, witnesses of faith and welcoming to the whole world, grateful for the past and moving towards the future. This is the spirit in which the monastery of Montserrat is preparing to celebrate its first millennium of existence.
