Cristo de los Faroles: who put it there and why?

A square that looks as if it's always been there

The Plaza de Capuchinos has a reputation as one of the loveliest corners of Córdoba: cobbles, whitewashed walls, silence and, in the middle, a crucified Christ surrounded by iron lanterns. Those lanterns, faroles in Spanish, give it the name everyone knows it by. It feels as if it's been there forever. Yet the square itself is the result of a deal between neighbours.

On one side stood the Hospital of San Jacinto, founded in 1596 by Pedro del Castillo for disabled poor people who were dying with no one to care for them. On the other was the Capuchin friary of the Santo Ángel, whose friars had arrived in 1629. A 2014 study of the square's origins explains that it came out of agreements between the two communities, and that it became a fixed part of the street plan from the first half of the eighteenth century. What looks timeless today began as a pact between a hospital and a friary.

Who was Fray Diego José de Cádiz?

In 1786 a Capuchin friar who drew crowds wherever he went moved into this friary. Córdoba treated him like a celebrity: the city councillors turned up in person to welcome him and ask him to address the city. He gave them three sermons. The first, just for them and with the doors shut, went on for two hours. The second was in the cathedral. The third was in the open air, from a balcony overlooking the Plaza de la Corredera.

According to the chronicler Teodomiro Ramírez de Arellano, who wrote up the history of these streets in the 1870s, the effect was dramatic: general confessions, thieves handing back what they'd taken, couples making peace and weddings that had been put off rather too long. By way of thanks, the city gave him a seat in its government as its theological adviser, entitled to speak and vote in council sessions. When the time came for him to be sworn in, a group of councillors went to fetch him from the friary.

Fray Diego had legions of followers and more than a few critics. He was later beatified and became known as the "apostle of Andalusia". He's one of the people who explain this square.

The crucifix he really did give

Here's the first trap in the story. Fray Diego did leave Córdoba a crucifix, and that's documented. When he was sworn in, he wanted to return the compliment, and handed the city the cross that went with him on his missions: a small crucifix with a gilt Immaculate Conception at its foot. The councillors placed it in an urn, also gilt, next to the altar of the room where they met. By the time Arellano was writing, it was kept in the municipal archive.

That crucifix isn't the one on the square. The one on the square is a stone crucifix standing out in the open. When people say Fray Diego "left a Christ in Córdoba", it's very easy for the two to merge into one.

Who made the Cristo de los Faroles?

Here's what you'll usually hear: a sculpture from 1794, promoted by Fray Diego and paid for by the Marquises of Ariza. Up to that point, the versions agree. On the sculptor, they don't. Some credit the Córdoba sculptor Juan Navarro León; others, in an article that draws on the 2014 study, say the figure is by Alonso Gómez de Sandoval and that Juan Navarro was the stonemason. We haven't been able to read that study in full, so we're not going to pick one for you.

The date, 1794, has something concrete behind it. On the square there's a stone plaque which, according to the published transcription, grants indulgences to anyone who devoutly says the Creed in front of this image of the Christ "de los Desagravios y Misericordias", and it ends with "year of 1794". What we haven't found is any paper showing that Fray Diego commissioned it. That's what's always said, and it may well be true, but we haven't seen it documented.

What an old text does confirm is that the Christ was there by the 1850s. In 1858, Arellano tells us, the mayor had the hermitage on the Cuesta del Bailío, the stepped lane up to the square, pulled down, with a plan all of his own: a clear, straight view up the slope, so that anyone at the foot of it could see "the Holy Christ in front of the Hospital of San Jacinto". There's no record that he managed it.

And why a Christ in the middle of a square?

Because of its name. Desagravio means making amends for an offence, and a Christ of Atonement and Mercy is an image you pray before to ask for forgiveness and mercy. The plaque with its indulgences points the same way: the Christ was there so that people would stop and pray, on a spot where they passed on their way to two churches. That fits the fervour Fray Diego's sermons left behind. But that one led to the other is a deduction, not a document.

If you like Córdoba's mysteries with an explanation, the city has a much bigger one: why the Great Mosque of Córdoba doesn't face Mecca.

Other characters on the square

The Christ isn't the only one with a story here. In 1778 the captain general Pedro de Ceballos, returning from a military expedition in South America, stayed at the friary in poor health and died there; Córdoba gave him the grandest funeral anyone could recall, and the cortège wound down the Cuesta del Bailío. Decades later, once the friars had been expelled for good in 1836, a buyer acquired the friary and knocked it down, and some of its stone was reused for the bullring. All that survived was the church of the Santo Ángel, with its doorways.

The Christ itself has changed, too. The railing round it isn't from 1794: it was added in the twentieth century, and not everyone in the city was happy about it, though popular sources can't agree on the year. And the nickname became so well known that there was even a film named after it, starring Antonio Molina.

Fact or legend.

Fact: Fray Diego José de Cádiz stayed at the Capuchin friary in 1786, preached to the city and gave the council a small crucifix, which isn't the one on the square.

Fact: by the mid-nineteenth century the Christ was already standing in front of the Hospital of San Jacinto.

Supported by the plaque, as transcribed: the date 1794 and the dedication to Atonement and Mercy.

Unconfirmed attribution: that Fray Diego was behind it and that a particular sculptor carved it; two versions of the name are in circulation.

Deduction: that it was put up because of the fervour of those sermons.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on Santa Marina and Capuchinos, at its last stop, "The preacher and the Christ of the Lanterns", right in front of the Christ. The two stops before it set the scene: "The gate between two cities" covers the mayor's plan of 1858, and "A hospital and a passing general" the hospital and the death of Ceballos. Córdoba's free route is The Mezquita and the Jewish Quarter, and our Córdoba guide has the practical side of your trip covered.

The Cristo de los Faroles: who put Córdoba's Christ of the Lanterns there, and why?

A square that looks as if it's always been there

Who was Fray Diego José de Cádiz?

The crucifix he really did give

Who made the Cristo de los Faroles?

And why a Christ in the middle of a square?

Other characters on the square

Where to hear it

Further reading

Where to hear this story

Santa Marina and Capuchinos

Plan your time in Córdoba

Your first city,
on Podtour.

Your first city,
on Podtour.

A square that looks as if it's always been there

Who was Fray Diego José de Cádiz?

The crucifix he really did give

Who made the Cristo de los Faroles?

And why a Christ in the middle of a square?

Other characters on the square

Where to hear it

Further reading

Where to hear this story

Santa Marina and Capuchinos

Plan your time in Córdoba

Your first city,on Podtour.

Your first city,on Podtour.

Your first city,
on Podtour.

Your first city,
on Podtour.