Laura González, a resident of Garabandal during the apparitions

I know the girls very well. In the village of Saint Sebastian of Garabandal we all know each other.

In the beginning, when the girls began saying that they had seen the Angel, to be honest we didn´t really believe them because they would go by themselves. I myself did not believe them, no. We thought it was just the imagination of little girls. We would scold them, telling them not to say such things or else people would laugh at them.  Later on the girls asked that four people would accompany them.

They were accompanied by four… or five women, I am not really sure.  They saw how the girls fell down with their heads tilted back, without bruising themselves on those rocks, and how they turned very beautiful.  They never tripped, and sometimes they would go so fast that we would say, “Oh, they are going to kill themselves! Oh, my God!”  

Later on we asked the girls, “Why do you run like that?”  They weren´t aware that they ran so fast, they were only following the apparition in every moment.  The apparition went ahead and the girls ran.  The young boys of the village were not able to keep up with them.  

They would often go out late at night, on several occasions they went out even after midnight.  The people from out of town would say, “Well this can´t be so!  The Blessed Virgin doesn´t allow one to go out at such an hour.”  We would ask the girls, “Why do you go out so late at night?” They responded, “Because the Blessed Virgin said it is when the most sins are committed.”

When they fell into ecstasies the girls would become very beautiful; their skin would become like a soft pink. When they were in ecstasies they were no longer in this world, what I mean to say is that when they were in ecstasies you couldn´t talk to them, you couldn´t say anything because they weren´t able to hear you. You would have to say it to one of the girls who wasn´t in ecstasies at the time, Conchita or whichever one who wasn´t in ecstasies. She would then say it to the ones in ecstasies and they would hear her, but they wouldn´t hear you.  The girls said that the Blessed Virgin told them that, before the Miracle takes place, many would stop believing in the apparitions.

The girls went to my sisters´ house, at least two times, in ecstasies.  We were there on the balcony when they arrived on one occasion.  The door was open and they went in and blessed my sister; they made the sign of the cross and left.  
The most beautiful experience, in which we laughed a lot, was with a friar.  When the girls were in ecstasies there were many people who went to ask them questions or try to get close, and if the girls grabbed someone by the arm that person was unable to get free.  So we were there one night, oh and what a laugh we had, we were seated at some tables outside in the street below the house of Ceferino, when they said: “The girls are in ecstasies!”  Conchita was holding onto a friar, and that friar had to run everywhere the girls went that night.  We saw the poor friar running this way and that way until he was no longer able to run.  What a laugh! We were almost ashamed to laugh but you couldn´t do anything else except laugh in such a situation.

The poor man had to run until the apparition ended.  This friar stayed close to where my house is; I live right next to the Church, and he stayed in the house with the long balcony.  The owner of that house told me that she had to hang up all of his clothes to dry from the sweat he worked up. How was it that that friar was unable to get free of a little girl?  The friar was convinced that it was the Blessed Virgin testing him and taking away all of his doubts, because the girls never grew tired and he was exhausted; he never forgot that.

There was a married couple that came from Barcelona, my son went with them to work and ended up staying there and got married.  Well the wife of this man confessed that she had never gone to Church; she never went to Mass except for a funeral or a wedding.  She used to go out at night with her husband and they would waste 10,000 pesetas on worldly things.  She told us that God had worked a miracle for her family.  She had a son who at a young age had infantile paralysis, and they brought him here.  They brought him twice and the child ended up being healed.  He made his First Communion here; I have a photograph in my house.  The four girls accompanied him dressed in white.  Before all of this happened they weren´t practising Catholics but later on they converted.  

Fr. Valentin said that before the apparitions Garabandal was the most religious and charitable village in the area.  In Cabuérniga the bishop came one day and said in a homily, Cabuérnigos, can you give me your word that you will be like the village of Garabandal who doesn´t pass one day without reciting the rosary?

Today you can see who goes. It’s changed completely. They say that if everything is true that’s the way it has to be.
During the first aparitions we went up to the pines, and I said:
 “Here, give this rock to the Blessed Virgin Mary and ask her to kiss it in the name of a son or daughter….”  The people collected rocks and placed them so that the Blessed Virgin would kiss them, all together there were about a dozen or two of rocks.  The girls gave them to the Blessed Virgin to kiss and they went putting them back in the same place that they had picked them up, without seeing where they were putting them.  When the ecstasies ended the girls gave back to each person the rock that he or she had given them, without ever making a mistake.

I was there when Fr. Luis Andreu was at the foot of the pines, when he said, “Miracle, miracle! miracle, miracle!”  Four times he repeated it.  Fr. Luis Andreu said it outloud; I was there, and those who were with me heard him also.  

Conchita said in her diary, “That day the Blessed Virgin appeared to us at night and at the end of the rosary we began to walk towards the pines.  When we arrived there, Fr. Luis Maria said, ‘Miracle, miracle!’  We saw him and normally during our ecstasies we can´t see anyone, but we saw Fr. Luis, and the Blessed Virgin said that ‘he was seeing her and the miracle that is to come.’ The people said we prayed the Creed at the pines and that we went down towards the village in the same state and when we arrived at the Church the Blessed Virgin disappeared.  As Mari Cruz had not seen the Blessed Virgin for a few days she continued in ecstasies, she went into the Church and at the altar of Our Lady of the Rosary and of Saint Michael she started to pray the Creed with the Blessed Virgin very slowly.  Mari Cruz said that the Blessed Virgin was teaching her how to pray slowly. After praying the Creed and the Hail Holy Queen she blessed herself very slowly and very well. Then, talking with the Blessed Virgin she said, ‘Oh how good that the baby Jesus has come!...It has been such a long time! Why did you take so long in coming and why did the others see you more?’  Among those who heard Mari Cruz was Fr. Luis Maria Andreu, a seminarian, and Fr. Royo Marin.  The next day the four of us went to sweep the Church and while we were sweeping Jacinta´s mom came in, frightened, and she told us that Fr. Luis Andreu had passed away.  We couldn´t believe it because we had just seen him the day before.  We left our brooms and went to find out what had happened.  Just before he passed away his last words were, ‘Today is the happiest day of my life, how good is the Mother we have in heaven!’”