Our Lady of the Suffrium

The Virgin's arrival from the sea · Benidorm (Alicante)

Patrona de Benidorm, Our Lady of the Suffrium is attached to an event of 1740: the image appeared, according to tradition, intact between the ashes of a drifting ship burned in the bay, a fact that the city is performing every year.

Origin and history

It is documented the finding of a drifting ship in mid-March 1740 and the apparition of a Marian image that became venerated in Benidorm, first in a hospital and then in the parish of San Jaime and Santa Ana. The tradition shows that the ship, without a crew, was burned out of fear of the plague and that some children found the image of the Virgin with the Child among the ashes, intact.

The archbishop of Valencia crowned it in 1925, and by recript of Pius XI, received on 2 January 1926, was proclaimed Patroness of Benidorm with James Apostle. Since 1971, the city has been performing every year the "Finding of the Virgin" on Poniente Beach, one of its most loved acts.