Care for a caramel? These are souvenirs of the Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza, the wrappers depicting the signs left by the Virgin Mary on her miraculous visit to a discouraged Saint James here in AD 40 - before her own Assumption! The shape you see is a small statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus atop a stone pillar, the pillar wrapped in bronze and silver and, since the 16th century, adorned with a conical manto (mantle), the statue radiating a golden crown. (There's a little window on the far side of the radiant baroque chapel below where the
devout can kneel and kiss a small patch of the pillar.) Medieval Catholics told how the power duo of Mary and James consecrated Spain as of special significance right from the start. Today Mary of the Pillar is also the patron saint of
Hispanidad - the whole Spanish-speaking world. The end of the long square in front of her basilica has since 1991 boasted an enormous fountain like a melting glacier meant to represent Latin America from the Yucatan down, though its shape is discernible only from the
air, and even then doesn't really make a lot of sense (except as an extreme representation of
terra nullius!). It's a lot to suck on.
Care for a caramel? These are souvenirs of the Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza, the wrappers depicting the signs left by the Virgin Mary on her miraculous visit to a discouraged Saint James here in AD 40 - before her own Assumption! The shape you see is a small statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus atop a stone pillar, the pillar wrapped in bronze and silver and, since the 16th century, adorned with a conical manto (mantle), the statue radiating a golden crown. (There's a little window on the far side of the radiant baroque chapel below where the 
