The Agricultural Gardens are the public space in Córdoba that has the highest concentration of monuments. In its enclosure are those of Julio Romero de Torres, Mateo Inurria and Cipriano Martínez Rücker, as well as those of two exemplary Cordoba residents, the gardener Aniceto García, stabbed while defending a woman who was the victim of a robbery, and Juana Victoria, that elderly newsstand owner who burned to death inside her candy stand at the hands of a criminal.
Walking through these gardens you can see three more monuments that have been donated to the city. The most recent is located behind the Grupo Cántico library as a perennial reminder of mental illnesses; Very close is what is known as the Monument to Agriculture, which was a gift from the John Deere tractor firm in 1970, identical to the other 30 that are spread throughout Spain. And very close to the duck pond is the monolith dedicated to Rubén Darío, offered to Córdoba by the Nicaraguan embassy.
The visit to Córdoba
In reality, Darío’s connection with Córdoba was very limited, if not non-existent. He only visited her once, in 1903, and fortunately she reflected his impressions in the book ‘Solar Earths’ published the following year as a souvenir of the trip he made through Barcelona, Andalusia, Gibraltar and Tangier with the chronicles that he promptly sent to the Argentine newspaper ‘La Nación’.
In its pages one can still perceive the fascination that Córdoba aroused in the Nicaraguan poet, despite the fact that the first impression -«A modest station; a bus that goes badly or badly on the street, over potholes and mud” – was not excessively positive.
He says in the book that he had prepared the trip to Córdoba with one of the few books he could use at that time, the ‘Cordoban indicator’ by Luis María Ramírez de las Casas-Deza, which despite being from 1837 still maintains interest for readers.
Rubén Darío is staying in a hotel on what is now Gran Capitan Boulevard, which he qualifies as “the main road of the town”where he sees “groups of people parked in the avenue, the eternal group of the Spanish city, who talk and ‘kill’ the hours.”
On the first walk he takes through the city, once he enters the historic center, he is fascinated by its urban fabric. «I, neither in Granada, nor in Seville, nor in Malaga, have I found that antique atmosphere of this enlightened capital and at a time the focus, it could be said, of universal wisdom,” he says.
Rubén Darío arrives in Córdoba with the mentality of the romantic traveler of the 19th century to evoke the splendor of the city’s Muslim past. He gives a description of Medina Azahara that surpasses any limit of imagination, with golden swans swimming in the ponds and with “the toilet where the favorite’s bed was, seen covered by a coffered ceiling covered in gold and steel, and studded with precious stones.”
Steeped in the spirit of his time, he describes the construction of the transept in the Cathedral Mosque as “vandalism”, although he does not hesitate to show his admiration for Pedro Duque Cornejo’s choir, and even so he confesses that “when entering, it makes you want to change your shoes for a pair of slippers, and murmur that “only God is great.”
Monument
To honor the man who revolutionized Latin American literature at the time, the embassy of his native country donated the monument that he accepted. City Hall and which was inaugurated 50 years ago.
The promoter of the idea was the diplomat Justino Sansón Balladares, who gave the bronze medallion with the poet’s face to five other Spanish cities, such as Ciudad Real, Cáceres, Gijón and Cartagena. In each municipality he was installed in a different way, whether on a plaque, on a monolith or under a shaft, as can be seen in the Agriculture gardens.
On the occasion of this inauguration, the City Council organized a poetic route in which the work of the honoree was read in different locations in Córdoba. The starting point was the monument, where the academic José María Ortiz Juárez glossed Rubén Darío, along with the logical interventions of Sansón Valladares himself and the mayor, Antonio Alarcon.
The next stop on this poetic route was at the Plaza de la Trinidad, where José Herrera Duchemín; at the Puerta de Almodóvar, in front of the monument to Seneca, they did it Marisol Salcedo and Antonio Barrios; Gabriel García-Gilon Cairuán Street, and Miguel Salcedo Hierro in the Campo Santo de los Mártires, in front of the monument to lovers, where he read ‘The Wolf Brother’.
Throughout the entire route, the municipal band, led by Damaso Torreswas performing various pieces in this unique poetic route with which Rubén Darío’s presence in Córdoba was perpetuated.
