An appearance of the Virgin Mary reported in the small Spanish town of Garabandal. After morning Mass on Sunday, June 18, 1961, two young gills, Conchita, aged 12, and Marie Cruz Gonzales, 11, were joined by their two friends Loli and Jacinta, both 12, in the schoolmaster’s garden where they were stealing apples. On the way home, probably feeling guilty, they began picking up stones and throwing them towards their left sides in the belief that this would ward off the devil. Sitting down to rest, Conchita saw “a very beautiful figure shining brightly.” When she drew the other girls’ attention to the figure, they too were persuaded that they saw it. Conchita said it wore a long, seamless blue robe, had big pink wings, and looked about nine years old. Returning to the same spot the following day, they all claimed to have seen the figure again, and it is reported that the children began to fall into trances when they were in church. On July 1 an angel appeared and told them that the Virgin would appear the next day; this and subsequent events were recorded in Conchita’s diary. When the Virgin appeared as promised, Conchita described her this time as being very beautiful and 18 years old, and said that she had an angel on each side of her, and in addition on her right side a very large eye, which Conchita maintained was the eye of God.
When the news spread, crowds began to come to Garabandal; it is said that they all believed the girls’ story because they seemed to be able to communicate with each other from afar; moreover they claimed that they could walk backwards, arm in arm, along dangerous mountain tracks where they might have been expected to fall. On July 18 Conchita fell to her knees in the street and a luminous white communion wafer appeared to place itself on her tongue. This incident was filmed. The girls are said to have had as many as 2,000 visions, and Conchita announced that the Virgin told her that many cardinals, bishops, and priests were “on the road to perdition”; she promised a miracle would follow a worldwide proclamation of the truth of the vision. The Catholic Church was unimpressed and has declined to give any credence to the manifestations. A claim of similar Marian appearances was made by young girls at fatima, Portugal, in 1917. This earlier claim, which included an extraordinary aerial phenomenon, was upheld by the Roman Catholic Church. The Garabandal visions were later branded hoaxes.