Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notebooks - Part One

Starting today I will again be posting Fr. Ramon Andreu's Notes! They are quite important and historical in regard to the truths of Garabandal! May he rest in peace!

Deacon John

Note: Since these notes could arrive in so many hands as others have before without my knowledge and to unknown people through unknown ways, I want to begin this writing with the following declarations:

1st—With special authorization from Fr. Doroteo Fernández, A.A. from Santander, on these dates and with approval from my Superiors, as well as the vice provincial from Western Castilla, as my rector, I was in San Sebastián de Garabandal several times.

2nd—I am writing about what I believed and heard to the cited Superiors.

3rd—I never gave an interpretation of the happenings that took place there.

4th—I recounted the historical facts and commented on others.

5th—The language used in these writings is used to bring memories of the facts, but that is not to say that it is taken for granted that these interpretations are accepted.

6th—The words, language, and figures of speech like Virgin, Vision, Child, etc.—serve to express determined facts, happenings, etc.—and because in some way we understand them to be the names spoken, so that is how we write them.

7th—The motive in compiling these facts and narrations is to have the memory of some facts lived by many people and in case one day they can be collectively useful, they should not be lost. For me, they will always be so, although they are a familiar aspect of interest, since they were left in my brother’s life, doubly my brother, and today, doubly loved, Fr. Luís María S.J., who I always admired and whose advice and conduct have served as an example for me many times, and who I had an advantage over in age only.

Ramón M. Andreu, S.J.

1st Diary

Month of June 1961

Summary:

June 18, 1961—the visions begin.

June 19-20.

June 21—in the Luminous cuadro.

June 22-23.

June 24-July 1.

June 18, 1961.

In order to reconstruct the scene and the other details of this day, June 18, 1961, in which the first apparition took place, it is necessary to refer to questions made to the girls, since they are the only witnesses of the vision.

To have some versions of what happened that give a first impression, it is worthwhile to question the girls’ first confidantes. The questions were made on dates closer to June 18th, that is to say, when the least time had passed from the facts to the narration of them; this is a less elaborate version that is more original.

The attached tries to reconstruct what refers to us regarding the girls. I cite some documents that I possess from a series of apparitions that took place from this date on.

In Fr. Luís María Andreu S.J.’s 2nd notebook, which corresponds to August 29th and later August 31st, there is the summary of a conversation with Fr. Valentín Marichalar Torre, parish priest from Cossío and San Sebastián de Garabandal, which says this: “Fr. Valentín says: June 18th, I am accustomed to asking people about the Commandments—it was the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; we asked the girls what the promises of the Sacred Heart were. It was to wear the scapular. They said: They already know that we have a Guardian Angel. Nothing more.

They marched at 6. That day I stayed here. On the following day they told me that they went to pick apples. We thought: “Can our Guardian Angel see us? They saw. Fr. Valentín said so. Fr. Valentín said that he didn’t want to know our foolishness. On Monday, when a mother went down to Cossío, she said that several girls had seen a Guardian Angel.

On Tuesday I went up and saw them while they were having a vision. I went to the Bishop, who told me to go up and control the situation a little.

As one can see in these lines there are sentences in a direct style, while others represent a summary or an idea we have talked about.

On July 29th, upon going up to San Sebastián de Garabandal, I received information from two women from the village who had stayed there; I have it like this in the notes I took in my notebook: “Narration of the two women: ‘the girls went to steal fruit and they saw an Angel. They interpreted this to mean that they shouldn’t steal, because of the good Angel on the right and the bad Angel on the left.’”

There is a paper on which Ceferino, father of María Dolores, made a chronology of the first days, beginning like this: “The Apparition began on June 18th.”

In concordance with what Fr. Cipriano Abad, Andrés Pardo, and Fr. Luís María did, and with the notes they took, it says this in the beginning of the second folio.

Responses from the girls

We wanted to ask the group of three girls questions to clarify some of the things they said. Loli’s father brought the three girls to his house. In one of the rooms, with Loli’s father in attendance, and with the girls in the company of Fr. Cipriano Abad and Fr. Ramón Andreu (who came at the end), the girls gave these responses to questions asked by Fr. Luís Andreu.

1st─“Did you see the Virgin from the first vision?”

R—“It was a few days before we saw the Virgin. We saw the Angel first.”

What I have in signed writing by the girls regarding the beginning of the apparitions is the following:

“Jacinta González González. Some girls see Our Lady of Mount Carmel who brings the Child. We also saw St. Michael; we are Conchita, Jacinta, Loli, Mari Cruz, and we were going to take some apples but we didn’t take them and then we sat down in a road and the Virgin smiled a lot and we remembered a priest who said that his name was Andreu and it is true that his brother who is very tall has the same name.”

(Notebook #3—Fr. Luís M. Andreu)

Autographed by María Dolores:

“—and we went to steal apples and we took them but I took a branch and Jacinta took them and then she jumped onto the road and we sat down. Suddenly we saw the Angel and he didn’t speak to us nicely.”

María Dolores Mazón González

(Fr. Andreu’s notebooks)