The Garabandal Apparitions

San Sebastián de Garabandal is a mountain village of about 300 people in the Peña Sagra range of Cantabria, northern Spain, some 35 miles from Santander. Four girls lived there. Conchita González, Mari Loli Mazón and Jacinta González were 12. Mari Cruz González was 10, three days short of her eleventh birthday.

Sunday evening, June 18, 1961. The girls were in the calleja, a sunken lane at the southern edge of the village. Conchita later wrote down what they had done. "We took apples not belonging to us, and we thought the devil to be happy and our poor guardian angel to be sad." They threw stones with all their strength to the left because they thought the devil was there.

Then came a loud noise, like thunder. A brilliant figure appeared, first to Conchita, then almost at once to the other three, who said it was Saint Michael the Archangel. He returned several times, silent, and on July 1 he spoke at last. The Virgin Mary, he said, would appear the next day as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and on July 2 she came. She wore a white robe, a brown scapular, a blue mantle and a crown of twelve stars, and looked like "a girl of eighteen."

After that the visions came almost every day. More than 2,000 were reported by November 1965. Spectators watched the girls in trance, eyes fixed on the sky. They ran down the steep mountainside, even backwards, too fast for anyone to follow. They fell to their knees on sharp rocks with a loud noise and rose unhurt, and some said they became as hard as stone, impossible to move.

August 8, 1961. The Jesuit Luis María Andreu, 38, watched an ecstasy and cried "Miracle! Miracle!" He called it the happiest day of his life. He died that night.

The night of July 18 to 19, 1962. Conchita had announced 15 days in advance that a host would become visible on her tongue. About 2,000 people gathered. Barcelona businessman Alejandro Damians stood less than three feet away and filmed. Believers described the host as "shining and resplendent." That film has not been located online.

On October 18, 1961, a message warned that "the cup is already filling up." On June 18, 1965, Conchita alone received a final one, which Spanish television reportedly broadcast live. The Diocese of Santander wavered for years, and in 1966 the four girls testified before Bishop Vicente Puchol Montis.

On March 17, 1967, he ruled: "There was no message. All the phenomena which occurred have a natural explanation." He called it "un inocente juego de niñas," an innocent children's game. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith backed him in 1969. In 2024 the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith found "no elements to conclude that they are supernatural," while allowing private devotion.

The girls themselves wavered. Skeptic Joe Nickell notes they retracted statements on three occasions, and says the claimed marvels bear "the earmarks of childish stunts and simple tricks." In August 1966 Conchita described her experiences as a possible "illusion, dream, or lie." Anthropologist William A. Christian Jr. linked the visions to the threat to traditional belief felt during the Second Vatican Council. Devotees answer that the Virgin foretold a time of denials.

Critics and devotees alike now set Garabandal beside Lourdes and Fátima. A feature film was shot in the village in 2018. Pilgrims from the US and Canada still arrive.