Sale at Christies of a group of beams from the Cordoba Mosque

The Cordoba Mosque

Sale at Christies of a group of beams from the Cordoba Mosque

No long ago I talk in these pages about the New Architecture in Spain , but I forgot to talk about the newest of the newest trend: the decostructivism. More exactly, the deconstruction of the Cordoba Mosque.

Unfortunately, there is a sad true beyond this joke, as Christie’s will auction five large wood beams from this highly important Spanish Muslim monument -declared World Heritage Site by the UNESCO- in a auction that will be held next April 4 th in London. As you can guess, Spanish authorities are quite concerned about the mysterious provenance of the lots, said to have been found in an old property in Arles, France (?), and even Spanish Minister of Culture, Mrs. Carmen Calvo, has asked the auctioneers about the possibility of delaying the sale of the beams until its provenance and acquisition are fully clarified.

All this controversy is not a surprise, of course, because Cordoba is Spain , Spain is Europe, and Europe has not any invader plundering its heritage, whereas 5,000 miles away, Assyrian antiquities are being stolen from Iraq and sold in London or New York with total impunity.