First Monday in May
Virgen de la Carrasca, Bordón, Teruel, Aragón, Spain
In 1212, a herder found an image of the Virgin in a holm oak (carrasca) in the rocky countryside of Aragón. There are several stories about what happened then, all of them ending with a shrine in Bordón: Templars carried the statue to Castellote, twelve miles north, but the next day the image was back on the oak; the Virgin made those carrying her to Castellote keep turning toward Bordón, and springs arose at each turn; or the Templars built a church near the oak in 1306, around which the present town of Bordón grew up. On the first Monday in May, people from the three towns to the south—Tronchón, Olocau del Rey, and Mirambel—conduct a processional pilgrimage to the Virgin de la Carrasca. They have done this "from time immemorial," according to a document of 1390 in the parish archives of Tronchón. Bordón's fiesta of the Virgin of the Holm Oak was celebrated on the fourth Sunday in September before 1733, when the Virgen de la Araña became the town's patron saint.
Sources:
 | Jordi George, "patronos," Bordon, bordon.webcindario.com/santos_patronos.htm, and "fiestas tradicionales," perso.wanadoo.es/bordon_teruel/fiestas_tradicionales.htm (picture) |
| "Bordón," Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre, es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bord%C3%B3n |
Also commemorated this date:
| Madonna Greca, Isola di Capo Rizzuto, Crotone, Calabria, Italy. Reenactment of a procession that ended a drought in 1100. |
| Sterre der Zee, Reusel, North Brabant, Netherlands (Star of the Sea). Silent torchlight procession. |
| Virgen de los Desamparados, Senija, Alicante, Valencia, Spain (Virgin of the Forsaken; Monday after first Sunday in May) |