Spanish Folk Figure. Born to a poor family of farmers in Calanda, a village about one hundred kilometers from Zaragoza, Miguel Juan Pellicer surely never imagined he would remain one of the most studied and disputed subjects of his era. Working on the fields belonging to his uncle at Castellon de la Plata, one fine day towards the end of July 1637, Miguel became the victim of an accident when he fell off a wagon full of grain exactly beneath its wheels, which resulted in the fracture of his right leg. Seeking medical help in Zaragoza, by the time he arrived there some fifty days later, having journeyed on foot, the leg had become so gangrened that the doctors of the Madonna del Pilar hospital decided to amputate it, with one of the practitioners who performed the operation being the renowned Juan de Estanga. With the amputation being carried slightly below the knee and successively cauterized with red hot metal, unable to resume his job on the fields, Miguel was forced to solicit alms for his living, first in Zaragoza and later in his native Calanda and its surroundings, which he visited either on clutches or atop of a mule. A great devotee of Our Lady of Pilar, while in Zaragoza, every evening he would ask for some holy oil that burnt before the sacred image of the Virgin Mary which he would scrub out of devotion onto the stub of his leg. One fine night on March 20, 1640 while at his parents' home in Calanda, having slept in their bed as his was occupied by a soldier passing through the village, his mother and father noticed that their son was suddenly carrying two legs. Going to Zaragoza along with his parents to render his appreciation to Our Lady of the Pillar, initially cold, hard and blue-black in colour and a few centimetres shorter than the other leg owing to bone tissue lost by the fracture, in about three months the leg gained in colour, strength and length. Immediately placed under scrutiny and examination, remaining one of the most authenticated and documented miracles to this day, on April 27 of 1641 the Archbishop of Zaragoza, Pedro Apaolaza Ramírez OSB., officially declared the authenticity of the miracle and, invited to the royal court at Madrid, King Philip IV knelt down before him and kissed the leg. The subject of Vittorio Messori's renowned work "Il Miracolo", Pellicer's remains were twice exhumed in 1950 with two legs being identified. Also strangely remains the fact that the amputated leg buried at the hospital's cemetery wasn't found with it was dug up during the examination process following the restoration of his lost limb. With Miguel testifying that during the night the miracle took place he dreamt of being within the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Pilar of Zaragoza rubbing his leg with the holy oil as he had done so many times before, the devotion towards the effigy of Our Lady of the Pilar of Zaragoza became yet more prodigious such the famous filmmaker Luis Buñel, despite being atheist, stated that "compared to Calanda, Lourdes is a mediocre place".