A New Lourdes in Spain: The Virgin of El Pilar, Mass Devotion, National Symbolism and Political Mobilization

Catholic politics of the past. Culture war, National Catholicism, and commemorations in Spain, 1881-1908

“…Finally, another reason to consider this period as part of a culture war is the importance its memory had in the Catholic ideological rearmament during the first Restoration and, in particular, in the articulation of national histories, which like those of Menéndez Pelayo and Merry and Colón emphasised the consubstantiality between Spanish and Catholic identity. In the same way, the memory of the Sexenio Democrático would be present in the organisation of the first mass national pilgrimages to Spanish sanctuaries such as those of Pilar and Montserrat (Andrés-Gállego and Pazos 1999;Ramón Solans 2015a, 2016Palacio Cerezales 2019).…”