There seems to be a pattern to these Marian Happenings among poor folks and nuns.One can imagine people poorly feed more easily hallucinating and subject to suggestive imagining. Institutional Catholicism moved in with monuments to attract pilgrimage who will be open to group suggestion. 
Interesting your first hand source to parse Lucia. Seems she was kept under house arrest?
Read a dense study on visionaries in Spain, whose title escapes me. Poverty & politics played prominently in the pious ploys of partisans. And the poor remain poorer. And the institutions rakes in pilgrim profits.
Keep on coming Mary!  You are good for religious business!