The Junta de Andalucía, responsible for the management of the Andalusian historical heritage, has estimated in a million euros the economic cost of the restoration of the area affected by the fire that last Friday put in check the mosque-cathedral of Córdoba. This was stated on Monday the Minister of Culture, Patricia del Pozo, who has insisted that it is an “estimate” waiting for the council to present the recovery plan. What has already been approved by the Autonomous Administration is the emergency intervention plan, which includes urgent cleaning, a necessary task prior to the rehabilitation and restoration project, sources in this department indicate.
“Today the emergency intervention plan will be approved and then we will wait for the recovery and conservation plan that will come later,” said the counselor during an interview in Onda Zero in the morning. “The Cabildo has asked permission to gather the necessary material for the removal of debris,” says a spokesman for that ecclesiastical entity, responsible for the management of the mosque-cathedral since its controversial immatriculation in favor of the Catholic Church. These functions consist of the placement of scaffolding and wood to proceed to take out from the temple all the elements that fell after the fire and subsequent collapse of one of the covers on one of the chapels and the unusable material. The technical team already has all the prepared machinery for the scientific police, who continues to work in the affected area, allows them access.
The cleaning project presented by the Cabildo has been authorized by virtue of article 24 of Law 14/2007 of Historical Heritage of Andalusia, which specifically refers to emergency interventions and is limited to a series of strictly necessary precautionary measures necessary to collect, review, cleaning and detailed study of the debris consequence of fire, indicate sources of the counseling.
Among the actions that are contemplated, the shoring of a column located in front of the door of San Nicolás is collected, the demolition of the calcined remains of the wooden structures of the covers and the temporal protection in front of the atmospheric agents of the chapels that have suffered damage
The cleaning is necessary to be able to undertake the restoration work, which must also be authorized by the Junta de Andalucía when they are presented in the corresponding plan. These works, as the Minister of Culture has pointed out, would cost around one million euros. “It is an estimate that has been done in a very initial way and that we put in quarantine,” he insisted on the well. The Cabildo, however and according to its spokesman to this newspaper, “has not given any type of valuation in this regard.”
On who would assume that hypothetical cost, the counselor has been clear in stating that “the Cabildo would have no problem in financing that intervention. The mosque-catedral is a monument that works very well, has two million visitors a year.” The Canon of the Diocese, José Juan Jiménez Güeto, also declared to this newspaper that the diocese will have no problem assuming the cost of the recovery of the monument because it has a contingency fund for this type of events.
The damage caused by the flames are “perfectly restorable,” said the counselor, who has bounded them to the chapel that served as a warehouse and two of the contiguous ones, the one of the announcement or the atonement and that of San Nicolás de Bari. Until now, the Dean of the Diocese had only confirmed that there were two chapels affected -the first two -without referring to the San Nicolás de Bari, open in the thirteenth century, such as that of the announcement, and with an altarpiece of the 16th century. “Seeing those three chapels, very spectacular with the black smoke, impacts you, but the damage is very localized in about 50 or 60 square meters and is perfectly resturable,” he said from the well, which has indicated that within those spaces “there are images that have not suffered damage: the altarpiece of the chapter next door, the Christ, the painting of the announcement, the San Nicolás …”
At the moment, the Restoration Team of the Mosque-Catedral has not been able to access the pieces that could have been damaged, while the technicians of the Scientific Police continue to work in the area to determine the causes of the fire, says the spokesman of the Cabildo.
Faced with the criticisms of the management of the Diocese of the Mosque-Cathedral, the counselor has broken a spear in favor of the action of the council-the speed of the action of the firefighters as part of the temple self-protection plans-and has stressed that, beyond the economic cost of the recovery and of whom he assumes it, the important thing is “the coordination in the authorizations and the coordination in the authorizations in the authorizations in the authorizations. Restoration ”, something that corresponds to his Ministry and for what, he has assured, they are in continuous contact with both the archbishopric, and with the Government of Spain and the UNESCO.