Swift Action By Firefighters Save Cordoba´s La Mezquita

A near catastrophic fire that broke that out on Friday 8th August at Cordoba´s UNESCO – listed mosque-turned-cathedral, ‘La Mezquita’ was contained thanks to the swift response of the city´s firefighters,

The “rapid and magnificent intervention” of firefighters “averted a catastrophe,” said Cordoba´s Mayor Jose Mara Bellido on X.

The fire is out, he said, adding that firefighters and police would remain on site overnight.

Videos widely circulated on social media showed firefighters in action trying to contain the fire in the main building, which draws around two million visitors each year.

‘The monument is saved. There will be no spread, it will not be a catastrophe, let’s put it that way,’ said the mayor.

Later, he announced that the blaze, earlier reported by the fire brigade as being under control, had been fully extinguished.

The fire started at around 9pm, sparking alarm for the early medieval treasure and drawing comparisons to the devastating 2019 blaze at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

According to Spanish media, the source of the flames was a mechanical sweeping machine that caught fire inside the complex.

Regarded as a masterpiece of Islamic architecture, the site was originally constructed as a mosque – on the remains of an earlier church – between the 8th and 10th centuries under Abd ar-Rahman, the Umayyad emir of Córdoba.

Following the Christian reconquest of the city in the 13th century by King Ferdinand III of Castile, it was converted into a cathedral, with significant architectural modifications made over the centuries that followed.