Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes: Part One, Post 14

Conchita in Santander

Before reconstructing what happened to Conchita in Santander, I’m going to cite what Fr. Luís wrote in his 2nd notebook, which represents a summary of what Fr. Valentín said:

“When Conchita went to Santander she told me two or three times when I asked her: ‘Whatever you prefer, stay or go’—‘I prefer to stay, but if you, my mother, the bishop, or my uncle the priest wants me to go, I’ll go.’

“When Fr. Luís and Conchita’s uncle who was a politician came, they went to begin the departure, but the others stayed in the vision and the uncle said: ‘Well, stay now,’ and she stayed and was docile.”

“When they left they went through the front door of the house, in my opinion, so the parents wouldn’t bother the girls.

What refers to the incident of the departure of Conchita to Santander can be summarized like this:

“Two doctors and two priests, one of them a canon, went up to San Sebastián de Garabandal around July 18th. The graphic report came into my hands, and it refers to these days, and shows in a photograph of the girls in a state of trance, with two priests standing with them, their arms crossed, observing, and the two doctors inclined over the children. According to the references that I have, a movie exists from this day on which they filmed, among other things, the moment in which the girls pass from one state to the other. According to what some doctors told me, the transition lasts a fraction of a second; we know this from relying on this numbered notebook and the film.

It seems in order to facilitate the observation of the girls and to find the origin of these phenomena, they thought of isolating the oldest of the four girls, Conchita, who was 12 years old, because according to the hypotheses that they formulated in the beginning, she was the strongest influence over the three younger girls.

The simplest way, it seems, to make the transition to Santander for the observation of the girl and her relationship to the other three, was to call Fr. Luís, her uncle and a priest. So they did this.

I don’t possess the exact information about what happened in Santander, only some of the happenings. One of the two doctors who had gone to San Sebastián de Garabandal around July 18th told me that he had performed a test on the girl to observe if they were compensating or if the columns they made reference to were the result of hysteria. He also told me that the girl left running and fell into a trance in the street. The same girl told me that she had gone to the beach, and that she had heard the Virgin without seeing her in the house on another occasion.

Other news that refers to Conchita’s time in Santander was given to me by Fr. Valentín and the brigand of the Civil Guard when I arrived in Cossío and San Sebastián de Garabandal for the first time on July 29th.

The first was Fr. Valentín. This was the first time I saw him. In Cossío, before I knew more than vague facts about what was happening in San Sebastián de Garabandal, he told me:

“Do you know the latest things that have happened?”

I didn’t know anything. He told me with emotion that Conchita had had an ecstasy in Santander and that at the same time the Vision had told this to the three remaining girls in San Sebastián de Garabandal. These girls became very happy and there are people who heard them.

One time in San Sebastián de Garabandal the brigand of the Civil Guard told me the store again, adding that the Civil Guard in Santander had called them to tell them that Conchita was having an ecstasy in the street in front of the Church—It was at the same time, he told me, that the three girls in San Sebastián de Garabandal had their ecstasies. The sentence the girls said was this:

“Oh, how wonderful, Conchita is also seeing in Santander!”

In the same line of references, Conchita knew that: “I saw the Virgin once and another time she spoke to me but I didn’t see her. She told me that she wouldn’t appear to me again because I went to the beach.”