Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The lava that stopped before the Virgin

Las Manchas, El Paso (La Palma) (1949)

In the summer of 1949, el volcán San Juan It erupted at the Old Summit of La Palma. A laundry of lava went down to the neighborhood of The Shoesthreatening the houses and the little one hermitage of San Nicolás de Bari.

El párroco, Don Blas Santos Pérez - to whom they would then call affectionately "the cure of the volcano"- gathered the neighbors and begged the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima so that the fire would not reach the people.

In thanksgiving, the priest promised to raise a monument to the Virgin of Fatima at the exact point where the lava stopped. The image, carved in granite, was finally inaugurated in 1960and there continues to be Mass on May 13 and October 13, dates of Fatima.

The story moved the world back in 2021: during the rash of Tajogaite (Cumbre Vieja)The cameras all over the planet saw the lava stop again a few meters from the monument, without taking it down. The press spoke again about "the image that the volcano can't take down".

It is a story that the people of La Palma keep with love as devotional tradition: the documented are the eruptions of 1949 and 2021 and the devotion of the neighborhood to the Virgin; the way the lava was stopped is counted and celebrated as a sign of the Mother's care.