page_title: Our Lady of the Pillar
section_title: Feast day
hierarchical_section_title: Our Lady of the Pillar / Feast day
caption_attribution_description: Retablo de la Asunción del altar mayor de la Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza (España)
context_page_description: Our Lady of the Pillar is the name given to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the context of the traditional belief that Mary, while living in Jerusalem, supernaturally appeared to the Apostle James the Greater in AD 40 while he was preaching in what is now Spain. Those who adhere to this belief consider this appearance to be the only recorded instance of Mary exhibiting the mystical phenomenon of bilocation. Among Catholics, it is also considered the first Marian apparition, although it is unique in this regard because it is the only one to have occurred while Mary was still alive on earth.
  This title is also given to a wooden image, commemorating the apparition, which is enshrined at the Cathedral-Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain. Pope Callixtus III granted indulgences for those visiting her shrine in 1456. In 1730 Pope Innocent XIII mandated her veneration throughout the Spanish Empire. On 20 May 1905, Pope Pius X granted the image a canonical coronation.
  Our Lady of the Pillar is considered the Patroness of Aragon and its capital Zaragoza, and of the Spanish Civil Guard.
context_section_description: The feast of Our Lady of the Pillar is celebrated on 12 October and she is the Patroness of the Hispanic peoples and the Spanish Civil Guard.  A grand nine-day festival known as Fiestas del Pilar is celebrated in Saragossa (Zaragoza) every year in her honour. The modern Fiestas del Pilar, as they developed since the 19th century, begin on the weekend preceding 12 October and they end on the Sunday after 12 October (i.e. they move between 5–13 and 11–19 October). They were declared as a "national holiday of touristic interest" (Fiesta de Interés Turístico Nacional) by the Ministerio de Comercio y Turismo in 1980.
  As 12 October happens to coincide with the day of the year 1492 when land was first sighted on Columbus' First Voyage, 
  the Fiesta de la Raza Española, first proposed in 1913 by Faustino Rodríguez-San Pedro y Díaz-Argüelles (in the USA later dubbed "Columbus Day", as Columbus tends to be considered Italian rather than Spanish in North America) falls on the same date.
  The Fiesta de la Raza Española was declared the national holiday of Spain in a decree by Antonio Maura and king Alfonso XIII
  of 1918. The alternative name Día de la Hispanidad was proposed in the late 1920s by Ramiro de Maeztu, based on a suggestion by Zacarías de Vizcarra.
  After the Civil War, on 12 October 1939, the Día de la Raza was celebrated in Saragossa (Zaragoza), presided by Francisco Franco, with a special devotion to the Virgen del Pilar. Chilean foreign vice-secretary Germán Vergara Donoso commented that the "profound significance of the celebration was the intimate inter-penetration of the homage to the Race and the devotion to Our Lady of the Pillar, i.e. the symbol of the ever more extensive union between America and Spain."
  The name of Día de la Hispanidad was introduced as the official name of the national holiday in a decree of 9 January 1958.
  During the transition to democracy, there was a proposal to shift the national day to 6 December, the day of adoption of the Constitution, but in the end, in a decree of 1982, the day of 12 October was retained, under the name of  Fiesta Nacional de España y Día de la Hispanidad. In 1987, the name was reduced to just Día de la Fiesta Nacional de España.
caption: Altarpiece of the Assumption of the main altar of the Basilica  of Our Lady of Pilar de Zaragoza (Spain).
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