The Limpias crucifix: the Santo Cristo de la Agonía that opened its eyes

Limpias is a small town in Cantabria, about 48 km from Santander. Its church of San Pedro holds the Santo Cristo de la Agonía, the "Christ of the Agony". A life-size crucifix of carved, painted wood, set between the Sorrowful Virgin and St John on the high altarpiece. Who carved it is still disputed.

There was an earlier claim. August 1914. Fr. Antonio López, fitting electric lighting, saw the eyes closed, then open, and fell from the ladder. He also confirmed the eyes are fixed and the statue has no mechanism. He kept his account private until March 1920.

Sunday 30 March 1919. The last day of a parish mission run by Capuchin friars. A girl of about 12 came up to Fr. Anselmo de Jalón. "Father Jalon! Father Jalon! do look, the Christ has His eyes shut!" He waved her away. Other children backed her up. They would "swear to it before the Bishop and the Pope."

At the congregation's request he climbed a ladder. He "touched the neck with the tips of his fingers. To his very great amazement he saw that the body was actually covered with sweat." Adults then reported the eyes opening and closing, and blood flowing down from the face. "Men and women cried out in their agitation; many wept with emotion over this extraordinary occurrence."

From 24 April, reports came almost every day. On 4 May, D. Adolfo Arenaza watched through field-glasses and saw the eyes move three times. In July, Heriberto de la Villa, an atheist medical student, saw blood from a wound above the left eyebrow. He swore an oath in the sacristy. On 27 August came a bishop, Manuel Ruiz y Rodríguez of Pinar del Río, Cuba. "I saw distinctly how Our Lord opened and closed His Mouth; He shut it very slowly but opened it quickly."

King Alfonso XIII visited on 31 July 1919. The historian William A. Christian Jr. counts over a quarter of a million pilgrims between 1919 and 1926. About one in ten reported movement. Thousands of testimonies were written down, more than 2,500 of them sworn. Yet people sitting beside a witness often saw nothing.

Within 48 hours of the first sighting, the archpriest, D. Eduardo Miqueli, had written to the diocese. The Diocese of Santander opened a canonical process in 1920. Sources disagree on July or November. It informed the Holy See and blessed the pilgrimages. A plenary indulgence followed on 21 July 1921, and the papal nuncio inspected the image from all sides that September. There was never a formal ruling. The file was archived. Most testimony albums were destroyed in the Spanish Civil War. Only Volume 3 survives.

Critics spoke of optical illusion, collective suggestion, candlelight, humidity and the altar's height. Witnesses pushed back. "It could not be an effect of the light either, for otherwise everyone would have seen it, and that was not so," said Arenaza. The bishop from Cuba added: "The eyes are of porcelain and yet move; the mouth is of wood and opens and shuts."

In 1920 the Dominican Fray Luis Urbano argued that the phenomena happened "not externally but within the viewer". No mechanism was ever found. No one was accused of fraud.

Christian places Limpias against a background of "high inflation, general strikes, and political turmoil," and treats it, with Piedramillera, as a precedent for the Ezkioga apparitions of 1931. A pastoral letter from Pinar del Río carried the devotion to Cuba. In 2011, Cuarto Milenio devoted an episode to the case. The question it raised was never settled.