El Santuario Diegueño is a tourist complex with three independent elements: Asao Restaurant, Los Peregrinos Event Centre and a 60-room Boutique Hotel facility under construction.
The name of the complex comes from the former native inhabitants of this region, the Diegueños or better known as Kumeyaay Indians. The Diegueños were a semi-nomadic group who established in different places during yearly seasons, like in the areas of what nowadays are Tecate, San Diego, Tijuana, Valle de Guadalupe and Sierra de Juarez. They began their annual pilgrimage in Sierra de Juarez collecting pine nuts, and as the seasons changed, they came down to what is now known as Tecate to get acorns out of oak trees for food. Afterwards, the Diegueños moved down to the coastal side to fish and to settle temporarily in Valle de Guadalupe. Finally, they went up to the mountains to begin their journey again.
When the missionaries arrived to this region of the peninsula, they established the San Diego Mission and, in their efforts to evangelize, they named the native Kumeyaay Indians “Diegueños”, because the jurisdiction belonged to San Diego. Therefore, the name of our complex comes as a recognition that Tecate was one of the several sanctuaries that the Kumeyaay people had on their annual search for food to sustain their tribe.