There will be no fairytale ending for the rebel nuns of the convent of Belorado, in Spain’s northern Burgos province, where a small group of Poor Clares who split from the Roman Catholic Church in May 2014 have been holed up for almost two years. A court set 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 12 as the day for their eviction. But the nuns have decided that enough is enough. Their two lawyers, Florentino Aláez and Enrique García de Viedma Serrano, will hand over the keys to the monastery. The case of the rebel nuns, initially seen as an eccentricity that attracted worldwide media attention, had become an endless legal battleground of civil and criminal lawsuits in which even the Holy See intervened.

Aláez explains it this way: “Last week, both of us lawyers, the media officer [Francisco Canals] and the nuns had a video conference, and they decided not to be present on the day of the eviction. [Canals] insisted it was going to be a historic moment, with the Civil Guard and everything, and that it had to be recorded… But the nuns said no, that it was too unpleasant for them. Several have already packed their things, and the rest will do so between now and Thursday: not one will be left on the day of the eviction.”

Where they will go while they find another place to continue their “stable community life” is still unknown. For now, they are staying with friends and family, and according to Aláez, the Orduña monastery could be a temporary solution. An eviction order was also pending against that monastery, but it has been temporarily suspended. There are three monasteries belonging to the Order of Saint Clare: Belorado, Orduña and Derio. “They don’t want to go to Derio because they consider it the root cause of all their problems… There were nighttime demonic apparitions there, strange things that couldn’t be fixed even with exorcisms. They told The New York Times about it,” Aláez explains. In early February, facing imminent eviction and in need of a new place to live, the schismatic nuns launched a website, queremosunconvento.com, appealing to the solidarity of the Spanish people.

The reason they have been kicked out of the convent, according to the archdiocese, was their decision to split from the Church, which entails excommunication. Under canon law, their expulsion from consecrated life—which they chose of their own free will—in May 2024 also entails the loss of the legal title under which they lived in the monastery.

The nuns’ defense, however, argues that Spain is not governed by canon law. “When each of them, as individuals, decides to separate from the Catholic Church, the monastery, as a legal entity, also separates, so neither they nor the monastery are subject to canon law anymore, and therefore the Archbishop of Burgos ceases to have jurisdiction over them and the monastery,” explains Aláez. Upon splitting from the Church, the nuns intended to create a registered civil association. But the Ministry of the Interior denied their request after asking the archdiocese for a report to determine if it complied with the law.

Of the 16 cloistered nuns who were in the monastery when the abbess signed the manifesto to sever ties with the Catholic Church, one left the next day, and five — the oldest ones — did not ratify the decision when religious authorities asked them about it. Now only seven remain, those who are packing their bags: Sister Isabel [the signatory on behalf of them all], Sister Sion, Sister Berit, Sister Paloma, Sister Belén, Sister Israel, and Sister Alma. The oldest of the group is 61. One of them, without revealing her identity to “protect” her “privacy,” summarized their situation to this newspaper: “We have enough to deal with just getting through life.”

In a video released by the media officer on Monday, one of the nuns, Sister Paloma, insists that they have suffered and continue to suffer “persecution for their faith” and denounces the “malice” with which they “are being targeted for elimination,” and for being “stripped of their good name, possessions, prestige, future, and friendships.” She asked for help to “rebuild a home” where “they can live with dignity and remain united.”

In the 70 pages of their Catholic Manifesto, the abbess explained that the decision to break with the Church had been under consideration for “many years” until reaching the “empirical conclusion” that all Church doctrines after the Second Vatican Council were invalid; the authority of the popes following the Council was denied, and Francis was declared a “heretic.” They placed themselves “under the guardianship and jurisdiction” of Pablo de Rojas Sánchez-Franco, excommunicated in 2019 and leader of the Pious Union of Saint Paul the Apostle, which Rome as well as religious experts consider to be a sect.

Since the publication of that manifesto, all sorts of things have happened: an audition to recruit someone to attend to the needs of the daily liturgy, the opening of a restaurant that didn’t even last a year, a night in jail for two of the rebellious nuns over misappropriation of cultural heritage, and a second investigation into possible illicit activities in the sale of 1.7 kilos of gold for €121,000.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition