The Virgin of Lithium

Celestial interventions in this week's Camino a Ítaca. And Virgins? Did I forget to mention Virgins? Click over to read the originally published piece in Spanish in the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

For the past few weeks the local papers in Cáceres have taken on a distinctly retro look, seeming more like throwbacks to the days when entire society page sections took up large portions of the ink printed. It’s as though the city was being visited by a foreign head of state or some extremely popular movie star and the media can’t get enough.

Pages and pages have been dedicated to her itinerary, who she was greeted by and even down to the last detail of what she was wearing and where she had acquired it. The ongoing genocide in Gaza (and now Lebanon) and Pedro Sanchez’s capitulation to thefugitive who has been living large in Waterloo, paid for by the Spanishtaxpayer have been pushed to the side by this, in some of the articles’ fawning words, momentous event.

One of the interesting aspects of all of this media attention, especially for an outside observer like myself, is that all of this hype and dedication has not been devoted to someone like Kamala Harris, Rosalia, Taylor Swift or even Queen Leticia and how she spends your hard-earned tax Euros on new outfits and shoes. All of this media hysteria has been given over to what is in effect an inanimate object.

Call it an icon, a totem, a figurine, a fetish or graven image but the extent of this fawning has been so great that I have even had to check twice when picking up a copy of the other newspaper in the region to make sure that I hadn’t picked up by mistake a parish magazine that someone coming from mass had left behind.

But the apparent frenzy that the centenary of the Virgin of the Mountain has sparked only scratches the surface of the debate that is really fermenting in the city. A closer look at the comments in articles and town hall posts, beyond those claiming that this statue represents all Cacereños or those rightfully questioning why article 16 of the Spanish constitution seems to have become a mere suggestion rather than law, shows that an entirely different polemic is happening.

It’s not a debate about Leviticus’ exhortation not to pray to idols or whether a sectarian religious figure should be feted by the local government and bestowed with the title of honorary Mayor, but rather a referendum on one of the most crucial challenges facing the future of the city: the lithium mine.

It seems that the faithful want to know where she stands on this issue, with many scandalized that this could even be conceived so close to her sanctuary.

The former mayor had his Pauline conversion after a mysterious occurrence when he did a complete about-face on his stance on the mine and as a result lost the election. While the current mayor twists himself into knots trying not to pronounce one way or the other on the matter until he too gets that same phone call, if he hasn’t already.

The question is if all of these prayers will convince the Virgin to intercede on the faithful’s behalf? And then perhaps more pertinently, what happens when she doesn’t?