Legends and stories of Begoña
The oak, the foot and the carlist bullet · Bilbao, Bizkaia
The sanctuary of Our Lady of Begoña keeps in its collective memory several of the most beloved legends of Basque spirituality: the finding of the image in an oak, the prodigy of the "foot" that stopped the oxen, and the cannon bullet that did not explode during the Carlist war.
The legend of finding in oak
The tradition most rooted in the Basque popular memory places the origin of devotion to Begoña in the discovery of the image of the Virgin among the branches or in the trunk of a product on the hill of Artagan. According to the most common versions of the legend, it was a Labrador de la zona - in some versions he is given the name Andrés de Galdames, although the historicity of that data is not documented - who found the image while working or feeding his cattle in the vicinity of the hill.
The found in the oak has an immense symbolic burden in the Basque cultural context. The oak - Haritz in Basque - is the sacred tree of the Basque people par excellence. Under the Tree of Gernika, a symbol of the Basque furs and freedoms, the General Boards of Bizkaia met. In Basque mythology and popular spirituality, oak is the axis mundi, the tree that unites heaven and earth, the sacred and the daily.
May the Virgin Mary choose an oak as a place of her manifestation could not be interpreted in any other way than as a direct sign: the Mother of God became Basque, adopted the sacred tree of the people as the throne of her apparition, and established in that land as Mother and Patron of that particular people.
The "foot left": the oxen that could not advance
The second great legend of Begoña is directly connected to that of the finding. According to tradition, when the men of the place wanted to move the image found in the oak to the parish or the nearest village, there was a phenomenon that they interpreted as supernatural: oxen pulling from the car where the image had been placed refused to move forward at a certain point of the road.
The animals stopped, planted their legs and, as the peasants tried to carry them, there was no way to make them move. In Basque, this phenomenon was called "foot is left" or simply the "stop of the car": the image did not want to be moved from that place. The men understood the message: the Virgin chose the hill of Artagan as her permanent abode, and there she had to be built a chapel.
Este tipo de relato — conocido en la literatura hagiográfica como «la imagen que elige su lugar» — aparece en la tradición de decenas de santuarios marianos españoles: la Virgen de Guadalupe en Extremadura, la Virgen de la Peña en Graus, la Virgen de Arantzazu en Gipuzkoa… En todos los casos, la narrativa del «pie quedó» cumple la misma función: legitima el emplazamiento del santuario como elección divina, no humana. No son los hombres quienes deciden dónde estará la casa de la Madre; es ella quien elige.
The Carlist bullet that did not explode (1835)
The most dramatic episode in the history of Begoña - and the one with the most historical documentation - took place during the Carlist site of Bilbao in 1835. The First Carlist War (1833- 1840) faced supporters of the suitor Carlos María Isidro de Borbon with the defenders of Queen Elizabeth II and of constitutional liberalism. Bilbao was a liberal square that Carlist troops, under the command of General Navarro Tomás de Zumalacárregui, tried to take by force in late 1835.
First carlist site in Bilbao. Zumalacárregui's troops bombed the city from the heights. A projectile impacts in the basilica of Begoña without detonating. Zumalacárregui died on 25 June 1835 from a wound received during the site of Irún, and the siege of Bilbao remained unresolved for a while.
During the bombing of the city, the Begoña basilica - located on a top from which Bilbao was dominated - was hit by artillery. A cannon bullet entered into the temple and was unexploded. The projectile, which could have caused a massacre among the faithful who at that time had taken refuge in the sanctuary seeking the protection of the Virgin, did not detonate.
The Bilbaites did not hesitate to attribute the prodigy to the intercession of the "Amatxu." The bullet was rescued from the place where it was embedded and preserved as a relic and witness of the miracle. Bilbao's Carlist site was finally raised, and the city did not fall into Carlist hands, which reinforced the popular conviction that the Virgin of Begoña was watching over her devotees.
Signs of thanksgiving and exvotes
Beyond the great foundational legends, the Begoña shrine attests centuries of individual graces - cures, salvages at sea, releases of dangers, comforts in tribulation - that form the intimate fabric of Basque popular devotion. The exvotes - wax figures, votive pictures, crutches, chains of released prisoners - which have adorned for centuries the walls of the sanctuary are the most eloquent testimony of this story of anonymous graces.
Sailors of the Cantabrian who entrusted their lives to the "Amatxu" before they sailed; mothers who promised a pilgrimage if their children returned healthy from the war; sick who raised the 313 steps of the barefoot in a sign of gratitude: all this makes up the living history of Begoña, the story that is not in the books of History but in the heart of the Basque people.