Spirituality infrastructure: Notes for Analysing Arantzazu’s Ecosystem

Abstract

This article sets out to approach spirituality as cultural substratum in the enclave of the Arantzazu Sanctuary (Gipuzkoa, Basque Country) through the counterintuitive notion of infrastructure. Through four vastly different scenes, it aims to illustrate how Arantzazu, as an ecosystem, infrastructures spirituality, exploring this from a historical perspective, as well as looking to its social deployment. In the first scene, the apparition of the Virgin is the precipitating event that enrols an initial group of actors to her flanks. This inaugural event was followed by three others, in which spirituality was to be articulated in different but equally effective ways: the development, in the 1960s, of a laboratory for the production of language and community; the renovation of the basilica and the processes of emptying entailed in the realization of sculptor Jorge Oteiza’s project; and finally, the international mountain marathon Aizkorri-Zegama that takes place in the vicinity of the sanctuary.