The Scientific Police is finalizing the technical report on the fire that on August 8 threatened the survival of the Mosque of Córdoba, declared a World Heritage Site. The document, key to clarifying where, how and what caused the fire, could be delivered this week to the Court of Instruction number 8 of Córdoba, which has assumed the investigation of the incident, official sources indicate. It will be determined whether to open judicial actions and clarify, where appropriate, responsibilities.
His writing has been delayed, since the agents who work on the land had to wait for the covers of the chapels that were most damaged by the flames, some works carried out by the Cabildo technical team throughout last week. Last Thursday they could complete the eye inspection. “This is a report that requires a lot of precision and meticulousness,” explains an official source about the times for its elaboration.
The first hypotheses focused, from the night of the fire, on a short circuit of an electric barredora that was in the lobby of the San Nicolás door that the Cabildo used as a warehouse. That stay, in which chairs and other belongings were also stored, was covered with a curtain that, as recognized by this newspaper conservative architect of the Mosque, Gabriel Ruiz Cabrero, was where the fire turned quickly. “What has actually burned is the curtain, the chairs that were there are all chamuscated by smoke, but they are not burned. That is why the fire was so quickly up and, being so vertical, it could be spread,” he said.
The flames spread to the contiguous chapels of the Assumption, San Nicolás de Bari and Jesús Verde and the fire also reached that of the Holy Spirit, although, according to Ruiz Cabrero, only the wall was chamuscated, without affecting its interior, which houses a valuable altarpiece built by Hernán Ruiz II in the 16th century. The space most damaged by the fire, in addition to the area used as a warehouse, was the chapel of the Assumption, whose vault won at dawn on Saturday, August 9, affecting the altarpiece, although both the Christ who presides over it, as the central painting, of the nineteenth century, did not suffer damage, according to the conservative. “The most affected is a cornice from the top, where a wood has received a blow,” he told this newspaper.
In those tasks of desjecombro and safeguarding the affected chapels, the covers of these four spaces and shrming a column and the capitel that were also very affected by the fire had to be secured. All these waste has been stored to be analyzed by the Scientific Police for their final report and by the architects and conservatives of the Cabildo, who can determine why the fire was caught and if the fire protection measures worked.
This final report will be decisive so that the Court of Instruction number 8 of Córdoba can assess whether there are indications to open a judicial investigation and purify responsibilities, where appropriate. Cabildo himself has already recognized last spring the risk of using a chapel as a warehouse inside the monument. He did it during the visit of a delegation of Icomos, the organ that advises UNESCO on conservation, protection and value of cultural heritage, the mosque. Then they indicated that they had acquired two properties to transfer all the belongings they kept inside the temple, one of the greatest exponents of Islamic and Andalusian art.
Request for explanations in Parliament
While the police investigation follow its course, the political formations also demand explanations about what happened in the mosque to those responsible for the Junta de Andalucía, the entity in charge of the guardianship of the Andalusian historical heritage. The groups for Andalusia and Adelante Andalucía on Monday registered a joint request to appear in an extraordinary plenary session, the Minister of Culture, Patricia del Pozo, to give an account of the planned actions in relation to the management, conservation, restoration and protection of the monument.
After the Incencio, both coalitions were very critical about the fact that the management of the Mosque the exercise only and exclusively the council under the ownership that is shown by the controversial immatriculation of the good in 2006 by the bishopric. From these political groups, as well as by the scientific community and civil society, it is claimed that the control over the mosque is exercised by the public administration. The counselor, however, has praised the management that the Cabildo has been developing on the monument that described as a key for the fire of August 8 to have mitigated so quickly.