The first documentary references to the Patios de Córdoba contest are found in 1921, “although some sources mention its origin a few years earlier, in 1918”, explained Manuel García Parody. Although little or nothing is known about the author of the idea of a contest that has survived one hundred years. For our historian “The party’s paternity is not clear.”
1921, a troubled year
Manuel García Parody recalled in Hoy por Hoy Córdoba that 1921 was a turbulent year in this province, where the conflicts experienced in the “so-called Bolshevik triennium, between 1918 and 1920” were still recent. At that time, the historian recalls, “the living and working conditions “in Córdoba, as in the rest of Spain,” were appalling.
First contest, hardly unimportant
The first edition of the Patios de Córdoba contest was preceded by controversy. Parody recalled that the Provincial Council intended to convene its own contest called “Plants and Flowers”, although the idea was finally discarded in favor of the initiative promoted, that same year, by the City Council.
“That first edition had very little significance”, the historian tells us. In fact, the festival was not held again until 1933 “with the idea of promoting tourism.” Although they only participated 16 patios (very far from the current 50). “At that time the concerns of the people of Cordoba were different,” explains Parody.
– Poster of the 1933 Courtyard Contest / Córdoba Municipal Archive
Antonio Cruz Conde, promoter of the patios
After another stoppage in the celebration of the contest due to the Civil War, it would not be until the mid-1950s that the Fiesta de los Patios achieved the popularity and splendor of which it still enjoys. Its promoter was the then mayor of Córdoba, Antonio Cruz Conde. “The one known as Califa Azul was determined that the one of the patios would be the great festival of Córdoba, just as Valencia had the Fallas or Pamplona the Sanfermines”.
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