A thousand pebbles in honour of Our Lady who saved Fray

His name is Francisco Luis Guerrero, but everyone knows him as Fray. A few years ago, his life was turned upside down when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He had to undergo surgery and everything went well, but soon after he was told he had to have radiotherapy. It was hard for him and his family. In those sessions, Fray prayed to the Virgen del Carmen (Our Lady of Mount Carmel), patron of seafarers, to whom he has been devoted since he served as a sailor in the Spanish Navy.

The sea is part of his life, he likes sailing and he likes everything to do with sailing. One of his hobbies, to which he devotes incalculable hours, is recovering old pieces of boats, restoring them and learning about and passing on their history. Thinking about all this during his illness, he made a promise to himself; when he got better, he would pay homage to the Virgen del Carmen by placing an image of her on the promenade below his house, where he walks every day.

He got through the radiotherapy and although he is still having check-ups, one of the first things he did was to buy the image. He looked for the ideal place on a rocky hill overlooking the sea, in the bay of Torrevigía, in Benalmádena, very close to his home. On that same hill, for years, there has also been a statue of Buddha that someone put up a few years ago.

He placed the Virgin on a protruding stone and, at the same time, he placed some flowers next to it, fixed to the stone, with a metal container, where you can read his name and that of his wife. Sometime later he added to his already small shrine a bronze boat and a plaque that reads: "Virgen del Carmen. Patrona de los marineros" (Virgen del Carmen, Patron of sailors).

All this has turned this spot on the coast of Benalmádena into a place of pilgrimage. What Fray could not have imagined is that on seeing the statue, many of the people who walk there every day would stop to pick up one of the thousands of pebbles that make up this cove and place it near the Virgin as their offering.

Many even write a message on the stone, with the date they placed it or the country they come from. Others ask for love, health or peace in a small message. There are stones placed by people from many countries around the world.

Now this small hill has become a spectacle, with thousands of strategically placed white stones.

"For my wife and I it is very moving to see how in little more than a year the whole area around the Virgin has been filled with stones, with a multitude of references. Every time we pass by here, which is almost every day, we get emotional to see that there are more and more," said Fray, who has written a letter to the parish priest of the church of Carmen, in Arroyo de la Miel, so that he is also aware of the presence of this image.