Historians still debate the moment when Spain was born. Some place its origin in the conversion of the Visigothic king Reccared, when Catholicism became the faith of a united kingdom; others, in the endeavor of the Catholic Monarchs, with the culmination of the Reconquista and political unity; and there are no shortage of those who locate it in the modern era, with the liberal constitutions that would have given legal form to the contemporary State—although, strictly speaking, the latter rather marks the beginning of a spiritual and cultural crisis, not its birth.
However, there is a deeper, older, and more essential perspective: the one that understands Spain not as a political construction or a historical project, but as a providential vocation. In that vision, Spain does not arise from a conquest or a signature, but from a presence: that of the Virgin Mary on the Pillar, in Zaragoza.
Before that, Spain was already a Roman land: legally ordered, integrated into the civilized world, with its laws, its roads, and its language. Rome bequeathed the structure, the law, and the form. But the soul was missing. That soul would be brought by faith.
Tradition tells us that Saint James the Greater, one of Christ’s apostles, arrived in these lands disheartened, exhausted in his evangelizing mission. It was then that the Virgin Mary, still alive in Jerusalem, appeared to him on a pillar of jasper beside the Ebro River. She did not come as a poetic symbol or a pious vision, but in mortal flesh, to console him and give him strength. She promised him that this land would never lose faith in her Son.
That moment, which might seem piously legendary, is in reality the spiritual core of Spain’s history. There, Roman Spain—with its order, its particular imprint, and its legal sense—unites with Marian Spain—the one that receives its transcendent mission, its destiny of service to Christ and his Church. In the Pillar, the body and soul of the nation converge.
From then on, everything Spanish will bear that imprint. There is no Spanish endeavor, art, or thought that does not carry at its core that seal of universal faith. The Virgin of the Pillar does not only console James: she sends him. She makes him the messenger of a people called to evangelize, to extend Christian truth beyond its borders. That is why, centuries later, when Spain brings faith to the New World, it is merely fulfilling that first mandate received at the foot of the Ebro.
Hispanidad—that spiritual bond uniting so many peoples around a common language and a common faith—is not a political or cultural construction: it is a supernatural reality that springs from the Pillar. It is born when Mary imprints on this land Spain’s own genius: that of ardent faith, missionary valor, Catholic universality.
Therefore, in addition to saying that the Virgin of the Pillar is the patroness of Hispanidad, it should be affirmed that she is its founder. Because in her, Spain receives its identity, its mission, and its destiny. Before Reccared, before the Catholic Monarchs, Spain was already in the heart of Mary.