The Sanctuary of the Virgen de Guaditoca, Patron Saint of Guadalcanal, stands some 12 kilometres from Guadalcanal, in the valley watered by the Guaditoca.
An unbroken tradition tells us that on the rock bathed by the waters of the Guaditoca, the Holy Image appeared to a humble shepherd. The author of the Historia de la Casa de Herrasti, in which he deals with the lineage of the Ortegas of Guadalcanal, to whose family he was related, says the following: “Our Lady of Guaditoca, most miraculous Image, appeared on the banks of a small stream, on whose banks a fortunate shepherd saw her for the first time, touching with the extremities of his headdresses, the said crystalline waters: this event gave the etymology to her sacred invocation”.
Muñoz Torrado disagrees with this author regarding the name of the Holy Image, believing that it took its name from the Guaditoca stream on whose bank it appeared. The priest of Santa María de Guadalcanal, D. Bartolomé Díaz, in a more precise account of the place of the apparition. Bartolomé Díaz, in a report he gave, at the request of the Council of Orders in 1722, and says about the tradition: “That in the ecclesiastical and secular archives of this town there are no papers where the origin of the Holy Image of Our Lady of Guaditoca is recorded; but it is an ancient tradition, which has come from one to another, that this miraculous image was appeared at the site of the Vega del Encinal, term of this town (of Guadalcanal), on a rock, next to the stream of said Vega; and a short distance away a very short hermitage was built without the corresponding decency, on lands in which D. Alonso Carranco de Ortega succeeded him”.
This is the origin of the devotion to the Virgin of Guaditoca, and the title of Patron Saint with which the people of Guadalcanal have honoured and venerated her.
Before the pilgrimage that we now know, a fair was held on the grounds of the hermitage at Pentecost, which lasted three days, bringing together hundreds of people from all over the world, especially from Andalusia and Extremadura. In 1792, this fair was moved to Guadalcanal, which was not to the liking of the towns in the region, who stopped attending the fair.
In principle, the Virgin of Guaditoca remained in her hermitage and only in case of calamity did she come to Guadalcanal. For various reasons, in the end it was decided to hold two pilgrimages every year, one at the end of April, when the Virgin is brought to Guadalcanal, where she remains until the end of September, when, again on the shoulders of her fervent children, she returns to her Sanctuary, until the following year.
The Pilgrimage of the Virgin of Guaditoca is celebrated in two acts. It takes place first in April, transferring the image from its hermitage to the town centre to be watched over during the night, taken in procession and entrusted to the parish church that houses it until, in September, it is carried by its neighbours in a second pilgrimage, crossing the valley bathed by the River Guaditoca and stopping at numerous crosses, a total of eight crosses, eight obligatory stops, eight salves, eight ways of praying in song.
