Gonzalo J. Herreros Moya | La Victoria: Córdoba’s first public garden

Botany, urban planning and contemporaneity. La Victoria: a quarter of a millennium of Córdoba’s first public garden (FULL TITLE)

The collective imagination and historiography surrounding Córdoba have assumed that, after the crisis of the Baroque period, the city sank into socioeconomic stagnation from which it did not recover until well into the 20th century. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although it is true that it could not compete with the dynamism of the great commercial and port cities surrounding it —Seville, Cádiz, Málaga…—, during the Enlightenment Córdoba experienced a period of expansion in craftsmanship, culture and urban development. Long before the disentailments, in the 1770s Córdoba’s first public park-garden was planned near the Convento de la Victoria. It was completed in 1776 and is now celebrating its 250th anniversary. The first opening towards modernity came through flora, long before modernity itself arrived.