Waiting for a miracle
Most of its 300 residents were goat herders and farmers with small holdings. Staunchly Catholic, it is said to have been partisan towards the Republican side during the civil war that tore Spain apart.
Its summers are temperate, its winters can be harsh and until recently it was reached by travelling up a narrow dirt track only suitable for donkeys and carts. It was, in short, nothing particularly special.
That was until June of that year when the Archangel Michael allegedly appeared to four young girls who were out playing on a rocky path. Mari Loli Mazon, Conchita Gonzalez, Jacinta Gonzalez and Mari Cruz Gonzalez were told to prepare for an apparition of the Virgin Mary. The first apparition supposedly took place on July 2.
On October 18, the four girls, aged between 11 and 12 at the time, announced they had received the first of several special messages from the Virgin Mary. The Virgin supposedly told the girls that “the cup” was “already filling up” and if we did not change “a very great chastisement” would come upon us. We had to live “good lives”.
The apparitions are purported to have continued for the next four years. The Virgin could appear at any time, day or night. She would appear in different parts of the village, but often she would appear in “ the pines”; a group of nine pine trees situated above the village.
In an interview on the Late Late Show some years later Conchita Gonzalez, who had turned out to be the principal visionary, described the Virgin: “She has a white dress and a blue cape, but the dress is very long.” That she should be described in this way is hardly surprising given that this is how she nearly always appears in Western iconography.
The Virgin and the girls would say the rosary together and often the girls were seen to take what appeared to be Communion. There are visual recordings of the girls staring towards the sky in what appear to be extraordinarily uncomfortable positions and witnesses said that when the girls went into a state of ecstasy they would fall heavily to their knees onto jagged stones but would get up unscathed. Lights were shone into their eyes and they were even stuck with pins, but nothing could distract them.
Gradually, the Virgin stopped appearing to all the girls except for Conchita, who was told there would be a miracle in Garabandal in the future. Unfortunately, the Virgin swore her to secrecy and she can only inform us eight days before the event happens. Conchita says that on the day of the miracle a permanent sign will be left near the pines that can be photographed but cannot be touched. At some stage within the 12 months prior to the miracle a message would be seen in the sky as a warning to the world to change our ways. If we did not, the aforementioned punishment or chastisement would come.
Most Marian apparitions seem to have several traits in common. All of them seem to happen in poor villages in regions with little or no non-Catholic residents. In Fatima, Garabandal, Lourdes and Medugorje, the Virgin supp-osedly appeared to young girls.
In the God Delusion, ardent atheist Richard Dawkins argues against the possibility of such apparitions.
“Constructing models is something the human brain is very good at,” he writes. “When we are asleep it is called dreaming; when we are awake we call it imagination or hallucination. If we are gullible, we don’t recognise hallucination or lucid dreaming for what it is and we claim to have seen or heard a ghost; or an angel; or God; or — especially if we happen to be young, female and Catholic — the Virgin Mary.”
Nonetheless, there are many who believe the apparitions really took place and since 1961, Garabandal centres have sprung up all over the world. Desmond Monaghan runs the North’s branch in Armagh.
“We’re basically just trying to spread the word of Garabandal,” he says. “That’s been the purpose of it from the beginning.”
When I speak to him, the 74-year-old is in fact getting ready to fly to Bilboa to visit Garabandal this weekend.
“It means a lot to me,” he explains. “This is my fourth pilgrimage this year. I’ve never seen anything unusual but I’ve more or less felt from the very start that it was genuine.”
Desmond met Conchita Gonzalez in 2007. After the apparitions Conchita moved to the US and married the owner of a pizza restaurant. She remains very religious but as Desmond points out she has been reluctant to talk about Garabandal for some time.
“She and the husband live in New York,” says Desmond. “But she has an apartment in Fatima. The reason she goes to Fatima and not to Garabandal is because if she was going to Mass from her house in Garabandal she’d be beaten with people. I had a gentleman with me that time (I met her) and he was very inquisitive. He brought up some question to do with the apparitions. But she was as quick as he and said, ‘I haven’t spoken about the apparitions this past 20 years.’”
In her final message to Conchita in 1965, we are led to believe that the Virgin spoke through the Archangel Michael. According to Conchita, the Virgin said that many cardinals, bishops, and priests are on the path to perdition and they take many souls with them.
For their part the Catholic Church does not recognise the apparitions at Garabandal, but does not condemn them either.
“Well the local bishop there of the diocese told the local priest to carry on as if it were approved,” says Desmond. “So they’re taking part in the celebrations of the 50th anniversary. So everything looks positive about it.”
Desmond also points out that even though the Spanish government has little or no money to spare, the once windy, three-mile stretch of track is being widened. Is providential intervention guiding the local authorities to cater for the expected throngs of pilgrims when the miracle happens? Or is the authority simply investing in the village’s already increasing visitor numbers?
When asked by Gay Byrne when the miracle would happen Conchita said: “soon”. That was in the early 1970s. Conchita has yet to make her announcement.
Perhaps the most famous of all holy sites in Europe after the Vatican. Lourdes has boomed economically on the back of 18 alleged visions witnessed between February and July of 1858 by the then 14-year-old Bernadette Soubiroux. Fr Michael Sweeney made his decision in 1924 to build a replica Lourdes Shrine at Inchicore, Dublin, (pictured right) where those who would be unable to undertake the journey to Lourdes in France could express their devotion to Our Lady.
Spinning suns and other phenomena have been reported since three young girls first saw and allegedly spoke with the Virgin Mary in 1917. According to them, she gave them three secrets relating to both World Wars and the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II.
Since 1981 six women claim to have had over 30,000 visitations. In 2006 the local bishop Ratko Peric asked them “to cease with these public manifestations and messages in this parish”.
For a time in 1985, Ballinspittle in Co Cork became the centre of the Catholic world when locals saw a statue of the Virgin Mary moving. Many pilgrims claimed that the statue moved, after they had stared at it for hours.
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