Garabandal Spain Village

Path 6 — Pilgrim Adventures
The village in the mountains where Our Lady came — and where I learned to put things in God’s hands

San Sebastian de Garabandal — a small village nestled in the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain.

This pilgrimage was nothing like Medjugorje. Where Medjugorje was intimate — a small group, a few holy places, a rhythm of prayer and rest — this was a comprehensive journey across Portugal and Spain and France, organized by Penny, the same pilgrim leader who had guided me through Medjugorje. When Penny plans a pilgrimage, it is always meaningful. But this one moved.

Fatima, Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral of St. James the Apostle. Santa Cueva Covadonga, Garabandal, The Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liebana, where a piece of the True Cross is kept and Loyola. And finally Lourdes. Each place sacred. Each place holding something different. On a 206 Tours pilgrimage there is no time to think — you breathe, you move with the group, you receive what each place gives you and keep walking.

Garabandal was one stop among many. But it is the one I want to tell you about.

Garabandal Spain Village

THE JOURNEY IN
Breathing and Moving

We arrived in Portugal first. Getting off the plane, jet lag already settling in, one in our group with a swollen ankle from the journey. We were carrying things with us from the flight because there would be no hotel until much later that day. I felt I was simply breathing and moving — present but not yet fully arrived. I noticed others feeling the same way. The tiredness was visible in the group.

That is something nobody tells you about a major pilgrimage circuit. The first day is an act of pure surrender. You give your body to the journey before your spirit has caught up. And somehow that is exactly right — it strips away the self-sufficiency before the sacred places even begin.

SAN SEBASTIAN DE GARABANDAL
The Poorest Village — and the Most Religious

Garabandal is a small village in the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain, under four hundred residents living in stone-built dwellings. It was considered the poorest village in the region. It is also, by every account, the most religious.

One woman used to walk through the streets each evening ringing a bell to remind residents to pray for the dead. Now a church bell rings, summoning all to the Rosary.

Something about that continuity — the same intention, a different instrument, century after century — felt like the whole village in a single image. A place so poor it had almost nothing, and yet it kept the one thing that mattered most.

The apparitions here occurred between 1961 and 1965. Four young girls — Conchita Gonzales, Mari Loli Mazon, Jacinta Gonzalez, and Mari Cruz Gonzalez, all between eleven and twelve years old — began seeing an angel and then Our Lady herself at a rocky lane in the village known as la Calleja.

It began, as so many sacred things do, with something ordinary. On June 18, 1961, the children had taken apples from a neighbor's tree and gone to la Calleja to eat them. A loud thunderous sound from the sky. Conchita's head thrown back, hands clenched to her chest. The others screaming, wanting to run — and then falling into the same ecstasy. They all saw the same vision of an angel who did not speak and then disappeared.

The lane known as la Calleja — where the four children sat with their apples on June 18, 1961.

WHAT OUR LADY SAID
The Messages of Garabandal

On July 1, 1961, the angel spoke for the first time: “Do you know why I have come? It is to announce to you that tomorrow the Blessed Virgin will appear to you as Our Lady of Mount Carmel.” The following day, feast of the Visitation, the girls fell to their knees with eyes fixed above.

What followed over the next four years was a series of apparitions and messages that are still held carefully by the faithful who visit this place. The messages carried five elements: a Warning, an illumination of conscience; a worldwide Miracle to follow within a year; a permanent Sign to be left at the apparition sites; and a Chastisement if humanity does not turn back to God. These apparitions have been neither approved nor condemned by the Church and remain under investigation.

WORDS THAT HIT HOME
At the Pilgrim Center

During the presentation at the pilgrim center, two things in particular stayed with me. Not as distant spiritual maxims but as something that landed personally — words that found the places in me that needed finding.

Those two statements are not comfortable. They are not the kind of spiritual encouragement that leaves you feeling warmly affirmed. They are the kind that ask you to look honestly at how you are spending your days and what you are bringing to God with your hands. I left the pilgrim center quieter than I entered.