Triumph of St Raphael

Look up to the very top of the column: that is St Raphael, the archangel holding a fish, and in Córdoba he is much more than a saint. He is the city’s guardian, and you will find him on columns, in niches and on tiles everywhere. This triumph, the most spectacular of them all, was completed in 1781.

1The oath

The devotion goes back to a sixteenth-century story. According to tradition, the archangel appeared several times to a Cordoban priest, Father Andrés de las Roelas, and at the last appearance, on 7 May 1578, he made him an oath. You can read it right here, on the scroll held by the eagle on the rocks:

«I swear to you by Jesus Christ crucified that I am Raphael, the angel whom God has appointed guardian of this city».

The apparitions were linked to epidemics of plague, and over the following centuries the city filled with triumphs like this one. The one on the Roman Bridge, from 1651, is the oldest.

2A monument with a long history

The cathedral chapter commissioned it in 1736, but the project stalled. Bishop Martín de Barcia revived it in 1765, and the French sculptor Michel Verdiguier directed the work. When the foundations were dug, the tombstone of Bishop Pascual, from the thirteenth century, came to light and was placed in the base. Bishop Barcia died in 1771 without seeing it finished.

3What to look for

• The eagle holding the scroll with the oath.
• The figures of the martyrs St Acisclus and St Victoria, Córdoba’s patron saints.
• The fish in the archangel’s hand, a symbol of healing.