Francisco (Patxi) Goicoechea, the Convert
Carmen Medina also took an interest in Francisco Goicoechea, known as Patxi or "the lad from Ataun." At the end of July Medina told Starkie that Patxi (pronounced Patchi) had become a veritable Saint John of the Cross in his piety. His parents were tenant farmers and he was a carpenter on construction jobs. His first vision occurred on 7 July 1931, as he was making fun of the visions of others. His deep trances became a highlight of the vision evenings. Stern young men from Ataun generally went with him; they would carry him semiconscious down to the recovery room. He became the central figure in the apparitions from early July and was, in the words of the industrialist and deputy Rafael Picavea, "the most famous youth in the entire region."[49]
S 130; Picavea, PV, 13 November 1931. Except for the two-day parenthesis of Ramona's wounds, the press treated Patxi as the central figure from late July to mid-November.
We have seen that it was Patxi, a Basque Nationalist, who came out and said that the Virgin called for the overthrow of the Republic. He took the initiative in other ways as well. He put up a wooden cross at the site in August, the stage in October, and stations of the cross the following February. Patxi repeatedly predicted miracles, including ones for July 16 and mid-October. The Ataun girl and Evarista Galdós from Gabiria normally supported him.[50]
Construction, ARB 19-21; miracle predictions, ED, 23 July 1931, p. 8; SC E 13; García Cascón to Francisco de Paula Vallet, 31 October 1931, AHCPCR 10-A-27/2; Picavea, PV, 6 and 8 November 1931.
Patxi made a large and varied number of friends. He allegedly had the use of the automobiles of a devout Bilbao heiress, Pilar Arratia, and the Traditionalist physician Benigno Oreja Elósegui, brother of a deputy in the Cortes.[51]
L 14. Arratia gave 3,000 pesetas to the seminary fund in 1931 (BOOV, 1931, p. 354) and provided a house for the Ave Maria schools in Bilbao whose director, Doroteo Irízar, was also an Ezkioga sympathizer. She visited the German mystic Thérèse Neumann in the winter of 1931-1932. María Recalde had a vision in Bilbao at the house of "P. A.," 18 January 1932, allegedly in the presence of the brother of Cardinal Segura, B 601-602.
Because of his prestige, believers took him to observe the visions of little girls in the riverbed by Ormaiztegi, which he judged diabolical, and those of children in Navarra. Carmen Medina took him to Toledo at the beginning of October so he could attend the visions of children in the village of Guadamur.[52]Ormaiztegi (August 31): Easo, 17 October 1931. Navarra (Bakaiku): Picavea, PV, 6 November 1931. Guadamur: Cardús to García Cascón, 5 October 1931, and Picavea above. Patxi traveled to Bilbao, SC E 111, and in 1933 observed Luis Irurzun in Iraneta (Navarra), according to Pedro Balda, Alkotz, 8 April 1983, pp. 21-22.
By November Patxi had tried to pass on divine messages to the Basque deputies Jesús Leizaola, Marcelino Oreja, and José Antonio Aguirre. When he heard that Patxi had a message for him, Leizaola replied, "Message from the Virgin? I know her too. If she has something important she wants me to know, she will give it to me herself." In early December it had become clear that the vicar general of Vitoria rejected all the Ezkioga visions, and Patxi, Carmen Medina, and the other believers could only hope that the exiled bishop felt differently. Rumor had it that on December 14 Patxi had given Bishop Mateo Múgica, by then in the village of La Puye near Poitiers, a sealed letter that said the miracle would take place on December 26.[53]
On deputies, Picavea, PV, 8 November 1931; on rumored trip to France, J. R. Echezarreta to Cardús SC E 249, and Clotilde Moreno Eguiguren to a correspondent at Ezkioga, Bilbao, 15 January 1932.
I am not certain that Patxi went to France, but in any case he passed on the Virgin's instructions for Carmen Medina to take a group of seers to see the bishop. Medina went with Ramona Olazábel, the girl from Ataun, the child Benita Aguirre, Evarista Galdós, and a fifth seer on December 19. Bishop Múgica spoke to each seer separately for half an hour and allegedly told Carmen Medina that, whatever the origin of the visions, he did not think the seers were knowingly lying.[54]
ARB 44; R 29; B 290, 320, 717; Múgica, "Declarando," 242, 244; Echezarreta to Cardús, 24 December 1931 (SC E 263-264), and 7 January 1932. Declaration by Ramona to Rodríguez Dranguet, 18 November 1932, from private archive. Sources give the fifth seer as Juana Ibarguren of Azpeitia or María Luisa of Zaldibia.
Francisco Goicoechea (second from left) and friends at Ataun,
October 1931. Photo by Raymond de Rigné, all rights reserved
For the people of Ataun Goicoechea was "Patxi Santu [Holy Patxi]." They remember lines of cars parked in front of his farm and people kissing his hand and leaving presents. The nickname probably came after his apotheosis on 1 August 1931, when newspapers reported that he had levitated. After that he received large numbers of letters. In the summer of 1931 or 1932 Carmen Medina organized a bus excursion to Ezkioga for her many nieces and nephews living or vacationing in San Sebastian; they also went to Ataun, where Patxi obligingly entered into a trance. When they asked what the Virgin had said, one of Patxi's friends said she wanted them to leave the bus in Ataun for the use of the village.[55]
For levitations see chap. 10 below, "The Vision States"; correspondence, Rodríguez Ramos, Yo sé, 15; bus excursions, Rafael Medina y Vilallonga, Sevilla, 23 October 1989.
Patxi was a complex individual, and those who knew him offer conflicting testimony. Some say he drank a lot; others say he did not. They agree that he attended church, both before and after the visions, and that for a while during the visions he went to church daily. He was tall and handsome and spoke Basque better than Spanish. With some reporters he was camera shy and defensive, especially when there were questions that implied his vision state might have a component of mental illness or epilepsy. Some remember him as messianic. In the
projected reconquest of Spain, they recall, he was going to be the captain. Like some of the other more dramatic seers, he asked to die for his sins to save the world: "Mother, mother, do not weep, kill me, but forgive the rest, for they know not what they do."[56]
Lassalle, PN, 9 August 1931.
Patxi had his cuadrilla, a friend who answered his mail, and a schoolteacher who took down his messages. He also had the support of priests, at first from his parish, then from elsewhere. Therefore he did not need the kind of patronage that the younger or poorer seers did. From the end of August 1931 and continuing through early 1933 at least, he usually went to Ezkioga on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights with his friends. By the beginning of 1932 he was no longer the center of attention, and by May 1933 his nocturnal visions were almost furtive, his small band quite separate from the daytime seers. Formerly he arrived in a chauffeured car; now he came and went on bicycle after work.[57]
García Cascó to family in Bejar, September 1931, in García Cascón, "Algo más"; Picavea, PV, 3 November 1931; Ducrot, VU, 30 August 1933, p. 1365.
I do not know whether the subsequent absence of news about Patxi was the result of his rejection by others or his own self-exclusion. Perhaps the Carlist-Integrist believers, who predominated after 1931, rejected him for his nationalism. Or perhaps he was burned by bad publicity. His public downfall began with that of Ramona. As Catholic newspapers began to feel freer to print negative information, they pointed out that Patxi had made many false predictions. Rafael Picavea in El Pueblo Vasco exposed Patxi's inconsistencies. And when Patxi protested, Picavea ridiculed him for social climbing with Carmen Medina. As Patxi, Ramona, and the girl from Ataun fell from grace, the other seers also began to turn on them. Benita Aguirre reported that the Virgin had told her that the decline of a seer named F (almost certainly Patxi) should be an object lesson for seers, that they should shun worldly honors: "They spoiled him, and now what is left for him?"[58]
Goicoechea, ED, 12 November 1931; Picavea, PV, 13 November 1931; vision of Benita Aguirre, date not given, B 568.
The diocese early identified Patxi as a troublemaker. In August 1931 he refused to remove the cross he had put up on the hillside. And on December 26 Bishop Múgica of Vitoria sent his fiscal, or magistrate, to take testimony in Ormaiztegi that Patxi predicted a miracle for that day. Patxi had convinced Carmen Medina, who had imprudently spread the word. Patxi lost further credibility when he predicted a miracle for January. His clerical support in Ataun dropped away. He probably made his nocturnal visits to Ezkioga in late 1932 and 1933 in spite of explicit, personal diocesan orders not to go. Like most prominent seers, he also had trouble with the Republic, and in October 1932 the governor sent him for observation to the Mondragón mental hospital.[59]
For prophecy and investigation: Cardús to Ramona, 16 and 30 December 1931; Múgica, "Declarando," 241; and R 41-42. For Patxi in Mondragón: Burguera to Cardús, 22 October 1931; B 380; ARB 163; R 32-33. He was released 13 November 1932.
We catch a final glimpse of Patxi's complexity when on 15 March 1935 he appeared as a witness in a traffic case in San Sebastián. There reporters learned that the government had indicted him for taking part in the October 1934 uprising. Socialists had led the rebellion and took over much of the province of Asturias. In the Basque Country the more radical nationalists participated by trying to organize a general strike. When a reporter asked Patxi about his
involvement in the rebellion, he complained, "If I had known that they brought me here to bother me with questions about my private life, I would not have come. Whose business is it that I am the fellow involved with Ezquioga and at the same time an advanced republican?"[60]
Gil Bare, PV, 16 March 1935. For 1934 uprising see Fusi, "Nacionalismo y revolución," and Granja, Nacionalismo, 491-505.
I do not know how Carmen Medina's friendship with Patxi ended. Surely his crossover from the revolutionary right to the revolutionary left would have alienated her had they maintained contact. Her family remembers that Carmen dropped one youthful male seer when he told her that he and she should get married, by order of the Virgin.