Virgen de los Faroles - Córdoba, Andalucía, España
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Ariberna
N 37° 52.797 W 004° 46.773
30S E 343499 N 4193987
The Virgin of the Lanterns is a religious altar located on the north wall of the Mosque- Cathedral of Córdoba, in the community of Andalusia, Spain.
Waymark Code: WM194D0
Location: Andalucía, Spain
Date Posted: 11/24/2023
Views: 5
"Historia
In this area there was the altar and the painting of an Immaculate Conception, made by the prebendary Antonio Fernández de Castro (1659-1739) at the request of Rodrigo Rubio, a neighbor who lived in front of the altar, who lit his eighteen lanterns every night ; Currently there are eleven. In November 1927 the work suffered a terrible fire that completely destroyed it.
The then mayor Rafael Cruz Conde asked the artist Julio Romero de Torres to carry out a new work to place it on the primitive altar. As a model for the Virgin he chose the Spanish-Mexican Carmen Gabucio Sánchez Mármol, who also participated in other of her works. In the lower part, a woman with a comb and a nun, also Carmen Gabucio, are represented, evoking the profane Córdoba and the mystical Córdoba, while between the two are the Apostles amazed at the empty sarcophagus and the Assumption of Mary. The original painting was removed in 1936 to avoid a new fire and in its place a copy of the painting made by the son of the painter, Rafael Romero Pellicer. The original is currently preserved in the Julio Romero de Torres Museum in the city.
Verbena
The festival of the Virgin of the Lanterns began to be celebrated around 1850 and, more than a century later, it stopped being celebrated in 1960. It was in 1988 when the Federation of Peñas decided to rescue this ancient and emblematic tradition of the city.
Carmen Gabucio
Julio Romero de Torres met the model Carmen Gabucio Sánchez Mármol (1902-1993) thanks to Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, who the so-called "Chole girl" because she reminded him of the Mexican heroine of his Summer Sonnet. Despite being born in Palma de Mallorca, she went to Mexico, her mother's country, where she married the Asturian poet Alfonso Camín, until he returned to Spain after his divorce in 1925. He began working as a chorus girl at the Teatro Apolo, where he met José Antonio Primo de Rivera. He joined the Spanish Falange and infiltrated the Republican side as a spy until she was denounced by her own brother, who became lieutenant colonel of the Republic, and was imprisoned, first in the Cehegín prison, in the Murcia Region, and later in the women's prison in Madrid. She was sentenced to death, but finally on March 9, 1939 she was released and rewarded in 1941 as a former combatant. The rest of her life was in Spain, she retired as an employee at the Madrid Bar Association and in 1993, she moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he died a few months later at the age of 91."
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