The City Council of Archena pays tribute to a woman who is credited with the announcement 120 years ago of some events that later happened
Almost a hundred years have passed since the archenera Francisca Guillén Ortega (1886-1932), known as ‘La Tía Quica’ or as the ‘Iluminada de la Algaida’, left this world. However, the passage of time has not erased from the memory of several generations a story that places Francisca as a woman that she saw and felt more than any other mortal.
She is credited with the announcement 120 years ago of some events that later happened. She was also a very critical woman with the powers of that moment in history, which served to be persecuted, humiliated and threatened on several occasions. In fact, her death came when she was not yet 50 years old and under strange circumstances, which could have precipitated her burial.
For this reason, and as a tribute, the City Council of Archena, in coordination with her descendants, organized this Saturday an exhumation of the niche where Francisca Guillén was buried and her subsequent burial in another preferential place in the Archena cemetery, where in recent weeks has built a funerary monument. The act, presided over by the mayor of Archena, Patricia Fernández, aroused the interest of different researchers such as Joaquín Abenza from Murcia, who traveled to the place with two teams from the radio program ‘El último peldaño’ and the television program ‘Cuarto Milenio’.
Seer, santera, miracle worker and visionary
Archenero journalist Tomás Guillén tells in the book ‘La Iluminada de la Algaida’ that the followers of Francisca Guillén “numbered thousands and came from many places in the region and neighboring provinces, which caused her to be persecuted on more than one occasion and vilified by the political and ecclesiastical authorities».
According to the journalist, this seer, santera, miracle worker and visionary, 120 years after those predictions “still continues to be commented on, admired and referenced by many inhabitants of La Algaida, Archena and Lorquí, four generations after her contemporaries”.
‘La Iluminada’, according to Guillén, predicted in the year 1900 «five national and local events, of which four of them have already been fulfilled exactly». He predicted, in the 19th century, that the world would break out in a war for heaven (referring to World War II) and that there would be another war between brothers afterward (the Spanish Civil War). He also said that the day would come when women would have the same rights as men and he saw the great explosion of the Archena powder keg more than 50 years before it happened.