A Cantabrian People in the Council Years

San Sebastián de Garabandal is a small town in the region of Cabuérniga, in the municipality of Rionansa, in the Spanish rural Cantabria. In 1961 it had only 300 inhabitants, connected to the outside world by a mountain road that connected it to the valley. It was, in all respects, a place far from the world: without television, without telephone, with an agricultural economy and subsistence livestock, integrated into the popular religious traditions of northern Spain.

The year 1961 was a year of great boiling in the Catholic Church: Pope John XXIII had announced the Second Vatican Council, which would open in October 1962, and the expectation of a profound renewal of the Church was palpable throughout the Catholic world. In this climate of hope and uncertainty, four girls from a town in Cantabria claimed to see the Archangel Michael first and then the Virgin Mary. What followed for four years transformed Garabandal into a name known throughout the world and one of the most debated Marian cases of the 20th century.

The four girls were: Conchita González (born 1949), Mari Loli Mazon (born 1949), Jacinta González (born 1949) and Mari Cruz González (born 1950). None had a relationship with each other, despite sharing the last name González, very common in the area. They were childhood friends who shared the same rural environment and the same simple parish life of the people.

The beginning: the Archangel of June

On June 18, 1961, the four girls played together on the outskirts of the village when, according to their accounts, they saw a luminous figure identified as the Archangel San Miguel. The apparition was brief and did not communicate any explicit message. The girls, scared, ran to warn their families and the parish priest.

The news spread quickly. The parish priest, Father Valentín Marichalar, was one of the first to hear the girls' story. His position was a prudent wait: he did not rule out or affirm anything, he simply listened and observed. This attitude of reservation would be repeated in the following years as the official position of the local Church in the face of events that would soon escape any possibility of control.

During the summer of 1961, the Archangel continued to appear to the four girls on several occasions. On July 2, she announced that the Virgin would appear the next day. On July 13, 1961 - a remarkable coincidence with the date of the first apparition of Fatima in 1917 - the girls claimed to see the Virgin Mary for the first time. They described it as a beautiful, dark-headed figure, dressed in white and blue, accompanied by two angels.

Ecstasy and marches: physical phenomena

What made Garabandal a phenomenon of international attention was not only the content of the messages, but the physical phenomena that accompanied the apparitions. The girls entered states of ecstasy that the observers described as extraordinary: complete immobility, insensitivity to pain (they were nailed with pins without any reaction), eyes fixed at an invisible point for the present, expressions of kneeling and sometimes tears that ran through their faces without them looking aware of it.

Particularly striking were the "marches" or "marches in ecstasy": girls walked back at high speed on irregular grounds, in the dark, without stumbling or falling. The doctors who witnessed these episodes made a written record of their astonishment: it was physically very difficult for 12-year-old girls to walk back at that speed on a stony ground and in the middle of the night without falling or injury.

Dr. Celestino Ortiz, a doctor in the neighbouring town of Cosio, was one of the first to examine girls during ecstasy. His report, written in 1962, described in detail the physical phenomena observed and concluded that he found no medical explanation for the states of pain insensitivity combined with the untouched motor capacity that girls showed during the apparitions.

The messages: the Warning, the Great Miracle and the Punishment

The content of Garabandal's messages is organized around four main elements, which have generated extensive devotional literature and equally extensive theological controversy.

The first is the call to penance: Our Lady asked the faithful to be amended, to pray, to practice mortification and to return to God. This element is the most common in the Marian messages of the 20th century and presents no doctrinal difficulty.

The second is the Warning: a future event that will shake the consciousness of all humanity. According to the description of the seers, the Warning will be visible to all, it will not cause physical damage but it will be of a spiritual intensity such that each person will see himself as God sees it. It will be brief, but transformative. The seers claimed to know the date of the Notice but are not allowed to reveal it until it approaches.

The third is the Great Miracle: a visible and verifiable supernatural event that will take place in Garabandal on a future date related to the feast of a martyr of the Eucharist, on Thursday, between January 8 and March 16, in a year to be determined. According to the seers, the miracle will remain a permanent sign in the place of the apparitions (the Pinos, a sketch on the people) and can be filmed and photographed but not touched.

The fourth is the Punishment: an event of very serious consequences for humanity that will occur if the world does not respond to the Warning and the Miracle. The exact nature of the Punishment was not fully revealed; the seers referred to it with signs of anguish, without entering into details.

«Muchos cardenales, obispos y sacerdotes van por el camino de la perdición y llevan consigo a muchas más almas. Cada vez se le da menos importancia a la Eucaristía.»
- Second message from Garabandal, June 18, 1965. Source: documentation by Conchita González.

The second message and the crisis of the Church

On June 18, 1965, when the apparitions were coming to an end, the Archangel San Miguel read Conchita González a message that has become the most cited and controversial of Garabandal. The message stated that, since the first message of October 1961 had not been sufficiently addressed, a second more serious.

The text of the second message describes the situation of the Church in terms of alarm: it mentions that many members of the clergy are on the way to perdition and that the Eucharistic devotion is decreasing. The tone is serious, not apocalyptic. For the devotees of Garabandal, this text is a precise description of the post-conciliar crisis that shook the Church during the 1960s and 1970s. For skeptics, it is a vague text that could be applied to almost any moment in ecclesiastical history.

The official position of the Church: neither approved nor condemned

From the beginning of the apparitions, the bishopric of Santander - the diocese competent for the discernment of Garabandal - adopted a position of reservation. Several successive bishops spoke on the case, but always with nuances and formulations that did not constitute a final approval or condemnation.

The first statement of the Bishop of Santander, in 1961, asked the faithful for prudence and discretion. The subsequent statements of 1967 and the 1980s indicated that there was no record of supernatural facts in Garabandal, an expression that canonists interpret as a negative assessment but not a formal conviction.

In 1996, the bishop of Santander, José Vilaplana, issued a somewhat more nuanced statement, in which he recognized the sincerity of the seers but maintained that there was no evidence of supernatural. However, he did not prohibit private devotion and recognized the spiritual good that many faithful had found in Garabandal's messages.

The current canonical situation in Garabandal is, therefore, that of an open-minded phenomenon: the Church does not prohibit or endorse it. The faithful who practice devotion to Our Lady of Mount Carmel of Garabandal (title under which the figure appears) do so freely, knowing that they do not have the formal support of the ecclesiastical authority but not any explicit prohibition.

• 18 jun. 1961First apparition of the Archangel San Miguel to the four girls of Garabandal.
• 13 jul. 1961First apparition of the Virgin Mary. The ecstasy and marches begin.
• 18 oct. 1961First formal message of the Virgin, transmitted through the Archangel.
• 1962–1964More intense period of the apparitions. Hundreds of witnesses arrive in Garabandal. Films and medical records.
• 1965The seers go through periods of doubt and rejection of the apparitions, which they then reaffirm. Period of great confusion.
• 18 jun. 1965Second message, transmitted by the Archangel to Conchita. It's the last formal message.
• 13 nov. 1965Last documented apparition in Garabandal.
• 1967-Successive statements by the bishopric of Santander. None constitutes approval or final conviction. The discernment remains open.

The seers in maturity: confirmation and nuances

The four girls in Garabandal have had very different life paths. Conchita González emigrated to the United States, where she married and formed a family. He has maintained a consistent position over the years: he claims that what he lived in Garabandal was real and that he expects the Warning and the Miracle with the same certainty as a child. His public testimony has been cautious but constant.

Mari Loli Mazon also emigrated to the United States. He maintained a more reserved attitude than Conchita, although he never denied the apparitions. He died in 2009. Mari Cruz González, the youngest in the group, went through periods of denial of the apparitions in her youth, although in later years she partially reaffirmed them. His testimony is the most complex and irregular in the group.

Jacinta González stayed in Spain, where he married and lived a discreet life. He has spoken little in public about the apparitions, although he has not denied them either. His public profile is the lowest of four.

Partial retraction - especially that of Mari Cruz, who at some point denied the apparitions - has been used by skeptics as an argument against the authenticity of the phenomenon. The devotees respond that the seers of other approved apparitions (such as Lourdes) also went through periods of doubt and that this did not later invalidate the ecclesiastical recognition.

Theological controversy: why Garabandal divides

Garabandal generates passionate positions in one sense and another, making it one of the most polarizing Marian phenomena of the 20th century. The devotees see in ecstasy, in messages and in prophecy about the crisis of the Church powerful evidence of authenticity. The skeptics point out the inconsistencies in the testimonies of the seers, the partial retraction and the lack of episcopal approval after more than sixty years of discernment.

There are serious arguments in both ways. In favour of authenticity: the extraordinary quality of the states of ecstasy documented by doctors, the general consistency of the messages with the Catholic doctrine, the spiritual good that many faithful have found in devotion, and the fact that no bishop of Santander has ever issued a formal condemnation.

Against: the retraction of some seers, the absence of ecclesiastical approval after more than six decades (when Fatima was approved in twelve years and Lourdes in four), the inconsistencies in some details of the stories, and the difficulty of verifying the prophecies still pending (the Warning, the Miracle, the Punishment).

Garabandal today: persistent devotion without approval

San Sebastián de Garabandal today receives pilgrims from all over the world, despite the absence of ecclesiastical approval. The village, still small and rural, has conditioned the places related to the apparitions - the alley of the apparitions, the Pinos, the parish church - to receive the visitors. There is a small local organization that provides information and guidance to pilgrims.

Garabandal's devotees are present throughout the Spanish-speaking world and in several Anglo-Saxon countries, especially in the United States and Ireland. They publish bulletins, organize conferences and maintain websites dedicated to the dissemination of the message and pending compliance with the outstanding prophecies.

The case of Garabandal is, in short, a paradigmatic example of the complexity of the discernment of Marian apparitions: a phenomenon with elements of undeniable spiritual power, with recognizable pastoral fruits, but also with aspects that the ecclesiastical authority has not been able to verify sufficiently to issue a formal approval. The Church is waiting. The devotees also wait, with a faith that, for many of them, does not need institutional approval to be sincere and transformative.