They ask that the Ávila train station in Spain be named after Santa Teresa de Jesús

Antonio Sierra, from Avila, 89, is promoting a campaign so that the Ávila train station in Spain bears the name of Saint Teresa of Jesus, reformer of Carmel.

Originally from Avila, Sierra has spent 40 years of his life working in France, the United Kingdom and Ireland, a country in which he founded the Spanish Cultural Institute, today transformed into the Cervantes Institute.

Throughout his years outside Spain, he was always surprised by “how much I heard about Saint Teresa of Ávila,” he explains in conversation with ACI Prensa, especially in Ireland, where several television programs were even made in the late 1960s.

Retired 20 years ago, he lives in warm Málaga, in the south of Spain, but he does not forget the cold and snow of his native Ávila, nor his devotion to Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, a doctor of the Church, which has led him to request the name change of the railway station in the Castilian city.

Sierra first went to the Ministry of Transportation, whose first response was positive, but only half-hearted, since “they told me that the expenses associated with the name change were on me,” although they did not specify them.

In the second instance, he addressed the Ávila City Council to take on the project as well as the different political groups, to obtain their support: “Verbally, everyone has done so, although only the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) has given me written support. However, the mayor has not even given me acknowledgment of receipt yet.”

Some institutions and individuals have already notified the Ávila City Council of their support for Antonio Sierra’s project.