Catholic tradition holds that, in the early days of Christianity, the Apostles of Jesus spread the Gospel throughout the known world, with James the Greater evangelizing in Roman Hispania (modern-day Spain).

In AD 40, while he was praying by the banks of the Ebro at Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza), Mary bilocated from Jerusalem, where she was living at the time, and appeared to James, accompanied by thousands of angels, to console and encourage him.

[3] Some of the earliest archaeological evidence of Marian devotion in Zaragoza is found in Christian tombs dating from the Roman period, which appear to bear images representing the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.

According to the legend relating to the apostle St. James the Greater and his travels in Spain, on January 2 in the year 40, he was disheartened with his lack of success in proclaiming the gospel in Caesaraugusta (present-day Zaragoza) by the river Ebro, when he saw Mary (still alive at the time) miraculously appear on a pillar, comforting him and calling him to return to Jerusalem.

In 1456, Pope Calixtus III issued a bull encouraging pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Pillar and confirming the name and the miraculous origin.

[10] According to the account by María de Ágreda (d. 1665) in her Mystical City of God, Mary, mother of Jesus, was transported from Jerusalem to Hispania during the night, on a cloud carried by angels.

So many contradictions[clarification needed] had arisen concerning the miraculous origin of the church that Spain appealed to Innocent XIII to settle the controversy.

After careful investigation, the twelve cardinals, in whose hands the affair rested, adopted the following account, which was approved by the Sacred Congregation of Rites on 7 August 1723, and later inserted in the lessons of the office of the feast of our Lady of the Pillar, celebrated on 12 October:[12] Of all the places that Spain offers for the veneration of the devout, the most illustrious is doubtless the sanctuary consecrated to God under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, under the title of our Lady of the Pillar, at Saragossa.

As he was praying with his disciples one night, upon the banks of the Ebro, as the same tradition informs us, the Mother of God, who still lived, appeared to him, and commanded him to erect an oratory in that place.

[14] The year AD 40 is the earliest recognised Marian apparition in the Catholic Church, dating to a time when Mary, the mother of Jesus, was still alive.

[20] Our Lady of the Pillar is a common motif of the Madonna and Child in Spanish art; extant examples other than the Saragossa image date from the Renaissance period onward.

As 12 October coincides with the day of the year 1492 when land was first sighted on Columbus's First Voyage, the Fiesta de la Raza Española, first proposed in 1913 by Faustino Rodríguez-San Pedro y Díaz-Argüelles to fall on the same date.

The Fiesta de la Raza Española was declared the national holiday of Spain in a decree by Antonio Maura and king Alfonso XIII of 1918.

After the Civil War, on 12 October 1939, the Día de la Raza was celebrated in Saragossa (Zaragoza), presided by Francisco Franco, with a special devotion to the Virgen del Pilar.

Chilean foreign vice-secretary Germán Vergara Donoso commented that the "profound significance of the celebration was the intimate inter-penetration of the homage to the Race and the devotion to Our Lady of the Pillar, i.e. the symbol of the ever more extensive union between America and Spain.