Huerta de la Reina

The neighbourhood emerged in the mid-19th century, when the arrival of the railway in Córdoba attracted industries and warehouses to the land north of the city. In the shadow of those facilities several working-class housing nuclei were born, among them Huerta de la Reina, which takes its name from the historic market garden whose land it partly occupied.

For decades, the railway tracks themselves kept the neighbourhood cut off from the centre of Córdoba. The first overpass that made it possible to cross that obstacle, the Pretorio viaduct, began construction in 1920 and was not inaugurated until May 1924. It was widened in 1956 to help the growth of the northern neighbourhoods, and did not disappear until 1995, when the works to bury the tracks and create the Vial Norte finally allowed a direct street-level connection between Huerta de la Reina and the rest of the city.

Industrial activity continued in the neighbourhood well into the 1980s, when rising land values led to the gradual closure of factories and warehouses. From that period a single chimney survives, that of the former flour and oil factory of Rodríguez Hermanos, a Cordoban family firm founded in 1843 that ceased trading in 1982. It is the most visible trace of an industrial past that has today almost entirely given way to the current residential neighbourhood.

Huerta de la Reina has no historic monuments or signposted tourist routes. What it offers is a handful of places with their own history and, above all, the pulse of a neighbourhood lived out on the street, far from the usual tourist circuits of Córdoba.

On Calle Luis Ponce de León is the neighbourhood's municipal market, run by Mercacórdoba and open Monday to Saturday from 8:00 to 14:00. It has 12 stalls, of which only a few remain active today, devoted mainly to fruit and vegetables, fish and meat. It is the commercial heart of Huerta de la Reina and the best place to understand how the daily food trade works in a Cordoban neighbourhood away from the centre.

Between Calle Goya and the Pasaje del Pintor Mariano Belmonte lies a small garden where the great brick chimney of the former Rodríguez Hermanos factory is preserved. It is the only standing vestige of the industrial past that gave rise to the neighbourhood, and a good reference point for a stroll through its residential streets.

At number 24 Calle Goya stands the parish of San Fernando, canonical seat of the Brotherhood of La Estrella since the late 1980s. The brotherhood processes on Holy Monday with the images of Nuestra Señora de la Estrella, by the sculptor Juan Ventura from 1986, and Nuestro Padre Jesús de la Redención, carved by Miguel Ángel González Jurado in 1992. It is the neighbourhood's main religious and community reference point.

Huerta de la Reina borders Avenida de la Libertad, the same road where Córdoba's train and bus stations are, about 15-20 minutes' walk from the historic centre and the Mosque-Cathedral along Avenida del Gran Capitán or Avenida de América.

For public transport, Aucorsa city lines 3, 4, 10 and 11 stop next to the bus station, on the very edge of the neighbourhood, and connect directly with the centre and the rest of the city.

Huerta de la Reina does not appear on Córdoba's guided routes or in the usual tourist leaflets, and it is one of the least documented neighbourhoods in the city for anyone looking for information. Whoever comes here will not find monuments, but a neighbourhood that still works as one: with its market, its parish and its street life, a short walk from the Mosque and the train station.