October 12 is the feast of Our Lady of the Pillar at Zaragoza, whose tradition holds that the Virgin appeared to the apostle James beside the Ebro in the year 40, while she was living in Jerusalem, and left a column of jasper with the instruction to build a church around it. It is the only apparition Spanish tradition places during Mary's earthly life, and the pillar is what the basilica is built to hold.
The tradition is first written down in the thirteenth-century Moralia manuscript of the canons of the basilica; the site's Christian use is far older, and the church has been rebuilt across Romanesque, Mudéjar and Baroque campaigns. The present Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar, with its eleven domes along the river front, was begun in 1681 to designs later altered by Ventura Rodríguez. The image on the pillar is a small Gothic carving in wood, under forty centimetres; its mantle is changed almost daily and the pillar itself is exposed through an opening at the back where pilgrims kiss it.
On August 3, 1936, three bombs were dropped on the basilica during the Civil War. None detonated. Two of them hang inside the church, by the pillar's chapel.
The date carries a second weight in Spain: October 12 is the Fiesta Nacional, and at Zaragoza the Ofrenda de Flores brings hundreds of thousands in regional dress to build a mantle of flowers around an image of the Virgin in the Plaza del Pilar. Pilar is among the most common women's names in Spain.
