Garabandal

The apparitions occurred from 1961 to 1965, precisely spanning the Second Vatican Council. Four young girls reported nearly two thousand visions. The Church has neither approved nor condemned the apparitions. Three visionaries moved to the United States; one has died. The prophecies of Warning and Miracle remain unfulfilled.

On the evening of June 18, 1961, four girls were playing at the edge of the village when they heard a loud sound, like thunder. They looked up and saw a luminous figure. Over the following days, the figure appeared again, and they recognized him as Saint Michael the Archangel. He told them the Virgin Mary would appear.

On July 2, 1961, she came. The girls described her as dressed in a white robe with a blue mantle, a crown of golden stars, and a brown scapular—the image of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. She was beautiful, they said, beyond any beauty they had known. Over the next four years, she appeared nearly two thousand times.

During the apparitions, the girls entered ecstatic states. They would fall to their knees simultaneously, gazing upward, speaking to someone invisible. Witnesses—including clergy, physicians, and skeptics—observed them during these episodes. The girls seemed impervious to bright lights shone in their eyes, to pinpricks, to being lifted and dropped. They could not be roused from their trances by ordinary means.

The messages they reported emphasized prayer, sacrifice, and Eucharistic devotion. But they also spoke of future events: a Warning that would illuminate every conscience, a Miracle that would leave a permanent sign, and—if humanity did not convert—a Chastisement. These prophecies gave Garabandal its distinctive eschatological character.