Empty Old Towns: Rye and Cordoba

Empty Old Towns- Rye and Cordoba

 

Rye in Sussex and Cordoba in Spain don’t have much in common except that both can boast a picturesque, well preserved old centre (with many cobbled streets).

Cordoba’s fame and ancient buildings date back to the 8th century, under Moorish rule, when it became the flourishing capital of El-Andalus. From that period survive the magnificent mosque and rulers’  palace. The mosque has kept its character in spite of the parasitic later cathedral, which, like the monster in the film Alien, bursts from the mosque’s central cavity.

Rye’s history as an important south coast port is also very ancient, but the old part that still stands today is mostly late medieval and early modern.

There is now a slight geographic similarity between the two places. Rye was once on the sea, but coastal movements have left it on a river a mile or so inland, although the river is navigable for fishing boats (once a naval fleet could shelter in Rye’s harbour). Cordoba has always stood on a river many kilometres inland. But the river is the wide Guadalquivir, which was navigable for centuries, but now no longer.

In off season you shall know them. Cordoba is a major city, with a bustling commercial centre. But away from the shopping and office thoroughfares, along the extensive network of little streets and narrow alleys, there is a stillness and little sign of local residents. (A good rule of thumb is to spot how many balconies sport plant pots.) The tell-tale key safes are everywhere, indicating tourist apartments, empty in March.

In Rye in February there is also an emptiness in the old town. Second homes and Airb’n’bs dominate, not occupied out of season. A few sadly derelict buildings add to melancholy feel.

According to the local paper in Rye, there is much hand wringing by local government about the fact that locals can no longer afford to live in the centre that their labours maintain for the golden goose of tourism which brings a stream (perhaps the only stream) of golden eggs into the local economy.

There are revolts against over-tourism now spreading in Spain (though not yet manifest in Cordoba). A Saturday afternoon spent in Malaga shortly after our Cordoba visit was eye-opening.

The central streets and the port area were thoroughly thronged, mostly, I judged, with visitors. If this is what the city is like four or five months before high season, when the city’s beds will be fully tourist-occupied, then the protests (of which there have been many in Malaga) indeed have a point.

March 2025