Córdoba’s Mosque-Cathedral in name-change row

Inscriptions from the Qur’an share space with a baroque altarpiece in Córdoba’s Mosque-Cathedral, hinting at the building’s storied past.

But in recent years the word mosque has been removed from the monument’s website, leaflets and tickets; a move that might make it more difficult for visitors to appreciate the site’s history as a place of worship for Muslims and Christians, the regional government of Andalusia said.

Built on the site of a Visigothic church in the 8th century, the mosque was a focal point in Córdoba, whose intellectual and cultural life made it one of the great cities in the world at the time. When the Christians reconquered it in the 13th century, they built a cathedral in the centre of the mosque.

The site is now under the control of the diocese of Córdoba, which has begun referring to the site as the cathedral rather than the city council-approved name of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, Andalusia’s minister for tourism Rafael Rodríguez told El País. “Hiding its past as a mosque is like calling the Alhambra the palace of Charles V – it’s absurd.”

Describing that attitude as fundamentalist, the United Left politician said the diocese appeared to be “prioritising religious beliefs over common sense and the natural history of the monument. It doesn’t seem either reasonable or acceptable to me.”

He said the regional authorities planned to raise their concerns with the diocese next week. “It’s an essential tourist site for Andalusia, the second most important after the Alhambra. It seems absurd that they are not exploiting all the possibilities for tourism due to religious reasons.”

The regional government’s remarks come amid a dispute over the monument’s ownership. In 2006, making use of a law dating back to the dictatorship of General Franco, the diocese of Córdoba registered the world-renowned site to its name for €30.

In 2013, a group calling itself the Platform for the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba: Everyone’s Heritage, began a campaign to wrest the site from the Catholic church’s control and into the hands of public management. The group’s online petition has gathered more than 350,000 signatures.

The Platform raised the alarm last month when the Mosque-Cathedral disappeared from Google Maps, replaced by the Cathedral of Córdoba. Two days later, the name was changed back after the group started a petition urging Google to avoid being an “accomplice to this strategy of appropriation by the Córdoba diocese”. Google said it is investigating why the name was changed.

On Friday, José Juan Jiménez Güeto, the spokesman for the Mosque-Cathedral said the name was constantly evolving. “We have leaflets that say mosque-cathedral or the other way around. And some that just say cathedral. We’re not denying its history – it was a mosque and now its a cathedral. Nobody is going to deny this.”

He dismissed the regional government concerns, calling it an “artificial debate”. Visitor numbers are up nearly 10% so this year to nearly 1.5 million, with 2014 poised to be a record breaker. “The important thing is that people come from around the world and feel welcomed in this place.”