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It may have come rather too soon, but 9am I greet like Christmas Day aged seven. I know I’m going to love La Mezquita as I did the Alhambra in Granada but I’m still nervous like on a first date. I know how it looks but not how it will speak to me nor if we’ll look good together. After a quick churros breakfast, we hurry to the Mezquita.

Like a football match, I’m waiting for the crowd’s roar from around the corner but we enter through a small portal to instead find tranquility immediately. It feels like a city on its own. There’s a colonnade around all four sides and in the centre orange trees irrigated by sunken channels that bring water from the mountains, and on the far side stands the Mezquita itself. We buy our tickets and enter.

856 columns survive in the prayer hall of the Mosque

Inside, the mosque is still prominent around the exterior walls with its 856 of the original 1,270 columns supporting the roof. Centrally stands the opulent cathedral nave with its gilt work, very Spanish iconography and magnificent wood carving. But beside the main altar sits a reminder of a more recent and violant past, a plaque remembering the local religious who lost their lives in the Civil War, or the Persecution as the inscriber chooses to call it. That war was tragic and it is only in recent years, long after its end in 1939 and even Franco’s death in 1975, that one can say modern Spain declares the Republicans as the victors but at a tragic cost. Meanwhile, an elderly lady in a fully elevated mantilla proceeds along a red carpet to a wedding in a side chapel and any sense of the present day merges with the past temporarily.

 
I sense that Paul the Greek and Chris the DJ are restless to leave and we exit back to eat in the shade outside our hotel. We find a table and sit down far away from the wall-mounted TV spitting out bad House music but right next to five guys jamming with Spanish guitars. Has this all been staged for me? No, this is just what can happen when one ventures inland toward the real Spain.

 
We pay for the delicious lunch and are escorted by the hostal concierge back to their car park. Facing us inside is a 1950s Austin A40 completely covered in fine sand and dust. Did it belong to a Brit who also fell in love with Spain and never went back? If so, good man yerself.

 
Within minutes, we’re on the motorway back to the coast and I resolve to return to Cordoba to see the rest. Not too many orange groves flash past before the Dub Organiser and I draw our iPods out and begin a musical ping pong. El Greco’s hands tapping on the steering wheel vary in intensity according  to our musical choices and I’m resigned to defeat when my Duke Ellington’s Take The A Train live version is trumped by Chris and Phyllis Dillon’s reggae version of Perfidia.

Paella at Papa O’s. We had only just begun.

We hit the coast and the back of the beach in readiness for a fish feast at Papa O’s. Our party is once again reunited and, again, we celebrate the human spirit. My eyes have had too much to feast upon in this past day and now the table creaks with piscatorial delights. Tomorrow I fly back to London, the world’s greatest city, lighter in weight despite the many great meals, for I’ve left a part of me in Cordoba that has no mass, only missed heartbeats and a longing for our next date.

“The less we remember, the less we are. The past is being erased from modern conscience, if we don’t know where we are coming from, it’s hard to know where we’re going”   Carlos Ruiz Zafón

 
I’ve planned this day for over a year and, now it’s arrived, I’m as excited as a kid going to the fun fair for the first time. After a mighty breakfast, Paul the Greek, the Dub Organiser and I head off inland in one of our cars to Cordoba, the capital of Al Andalus when the Moors occupied Spain. We’d been to the Alhambra in Granada three years back and now we’re looking forward to learning more.

 
We quickly pass Malaga below us and head inland  I’m again taken aback by the modernisation of Spain since accession into the EU. The motorway looks and feels brand new. The road surface is as smooth as glass and we swallow the miles as we climb up through the Sierra Nevadas, eventually reaching 2,000 ft before we’ve hit Cordoba. Every bend reveals yet more acres of newly planted groves of olive, lemon and orange trees as far as one can see anywhere and the once barren land seems to want to no longer bear witness to the tragic Civil War which it reluctantly hosted.

In what feels like half the actual time, we pass a crest of yet another mountain and my Civil War sentimentality evaporates passing over the final ridge as we all see Cordoba before us hugging the meandering Guadalquivir river, compact with its medieval walls defined against the surrounding countryside. The Satnav is as good as a chocolate fireguard as we attempt to get close to our hotel. Buzz Aldrin had less trouble. After two circuits of the town, our collective hippocampus enlarged by the Knowledge of London deduces that we needed to pass through that security barrier over there which we passed only the once. Not bad, that.

No sooner are we through the barrier than we’re at our Hostal Triunfo, bang across the narrow street from La Mezquita, the mosque built by the Moors and later converted to a cathedral during the Reconquest of Spain. This is my reason to come here and I’m not disappointed. Its exterior wall stretches as far as one can see in both directions and must be two London buses high. We alight from the car and I briefly lose my breath as the dry 40C air hits me all over. No chance of a quick Levantian gust here to restore us, this is looking like a one-day survival course. We quickly check in, shower and creep downstairs back to the mouth of the main door, nervously looking out to see if it’s any cooler–the way they do in Western films when the duel is over on Main Street .

 
It’s no less scorching and now getting humid as we meander through the old streets from shadow to shadow, one old street to another. Dotted along the streets are former palaces now boutique hotels boasting beautiful interior courtyards with central fountains which now form their inviting eceptions. As tempting as they look for a cold drink, we push on in search of more Moorish treasure. We drop down to the river and admire the eight arched bridge left by the Romans when they settled here around 152BC.

On the north side stands a triumphal arch worthy of Rome itself which perhaps wasn’t out of place when Cordoba was Western Europe’s largest city by around 929AD. As we rise back up into the city, we’re met by a huge crucifix in the middle of the road, placed after the Reconquista in 1236 and letting us know who’s boss now. Another corner turned and we face the Posada del Potro, immortalised by Cervantes in Don Quixote.

Through the arch we find the 1500s courtyard reminiscent of the coaching inns that run off Borough High St in London SE1. It’s now the National Flamenco Institute and with sensitive refurbishment just completed, its future is happily assured. The fairy lights in the trees aligning the streets come to gentle life as the sun loses its fire and we’re spoilt for choice of where to eat with tapas all over the place at only €2 per dish. But we choose to dine al fresco with one eye on an adjacent tv to track the Euro progress of Ingerland.

 
My cod balls in tomato sauce are worth the long wait—Torres would’ve scored first—and slip down beautifully with the smooth Verdicchio at a ridiculously cheap €7.80 per bottle. Our eyes and stomachs now both overfed, it’s time to nourish the soul if we can find the jazz club that my musical soul brother Chris has found on the net.

Getting lost is no problem because we circle La Mezquita and wonder at its golden glow shining out against the dark blue evening sky. I look up at its Arabic inscriptions and Christian iconography and, call me an old hippy, ask why can’t we cut the crap and all live together? I’m excited like a kid on Christmas Eve staring at the tree’s lights, wondering what the gofts’ wrapping paper contains and can’t wait to visit it tomorrow.

 
We find the Jazz Cafe and enter. I’m nervous, is it going to be square or hep? I’m quickly reassured to the latter as I see Miles Davis and Charlie Parker album covers. In fact someone’s gone to a lot of trouble, as you can’t see the wall for photos and I’m sure that’s Tubby Hayes coming out of the speakers. At €2 for a caña pequeña, my happy feet are tapping like mad. With people still coming into the place at 4am, we decide to split the scene and get some sleep for the busy tourist day ahead.

 
We venture out into the still populated streets and i feel like we’re three dudes at the Ok Corral but we’re probably walking like the old music hall dancers, Wilson, Kepple and Betty. We find our room back at the hostal and I don’t remember my head hitting the pillow or snoring most of the night but, apparently, El Greco does.

Deserted by the golfers, Chris the Dub Organiser and I chill with Roberto by the pool, eating fresh fruit from his cool box. The sun begins to scorch and we drive to Cabopino beach. The warm breeze from North Africa soothes me under my parasol, but hunger arrives, so it’s a fish feast at the beach bar, sardinas a la plancha para tres, beautifully fresh mixed salad, bread, wine and agua con gas. We quickly concur in the headiness of the breeze, tastes and aromas that we truly have more than we need in life  and declare a fatwah on Life’s moaners.

 
Soon the golfers return, order what we just ate, join us back under the parasol and the banter bounces bed to bed. The Sloane Square rank and the Chelsea Kitchen are a million miles away.

Did someone say food? In the evening smelling like the Harrods perfumery, we arrive at the elegant La Plaza restaurant for dinner out on the terrace. Everybody chooses whatever they want and our table overflows. The enjoyment is only interrupted three times by news of Ireland conceding another goal to Spain in the Euros 2012. We need no TV in a corner found in other, lesser establishments, for the locals are sufficiently hospitable to inform us of this fact with a surrounding salvo of fireworks launched with every goal from surrounding balconies and flat rooftops. I’d heard Spain went crazy when they won the 2010 World Cup. I can definitely believe it now.

We stay locally after dinner, popping round the corner into JJ’s, an outpost for British ex-pats. By the look of them and their conversation subjects, they all arrived in the last millenium. Soon one of our party bridges six degrees of separation and finds he’d worked with one of them in the Post Office in Islington. I buy a book from a shelf and donate two Euros to charity as requested. It’s a compilation of Londoners’ oral history who recall going Hop Picking in Kent back in the day. I wish it were more fittingly poetry by Lorca perhaps, but this will do nicely on the Sloane Square rank next kipper season. Ooh, fish. Never mind.

We bid farewell to the cast of Minder and return to the apartment. Tomorrow is not going to be just another day.