According to Catholic legend, St. Augustine of Hippo, who lived in North Africa, had a revelation from an angel, who ordered him to carve an image of the Virgin Mary.

The image was taken to Spain by his disciple Saint Cyprian, who ended up in Chipiona, where the Virgin of Regla is venerated.

[1] Her feast day, September 8, coincides with the Nativity of Mary, and after events of weathering and a fierce storm on the bordering Strait of Gibraltar, she became a patroness of seamen.

In Cuba, in the Regla municipality of Havana, a hermitage was built in 1687 by a pilgrim named Manuel Antonio dedicated to the Virgin, although it was later destroyed by a 1692 hurricane.

[7] In the syncretic Afro-Cuban religion of Yorùbá (originally known as Santería,) the Virgin is associated with Yemayá, the Yoruba orisha of the sea.