Just when you think a story is done it takes another twist. I have recently written a piece for the Telegraph about Córdoba, Andalucía, a city best known for a mosque that is now used as a cathedral. The Mezquita, one of the greatest monuments of Moorish Spain, has been a place of Christian worship since the Reconquest. Spanish Muslims have been asking recently for permission to pray there alongside Catholics, and have been rebuffed by the Archbishop of Córdoba, who says that granting their request “would only cause confusion among the faithful”.
At the weekend, it emerged that Muslim prayer has not always been prohibited. Before the 1990s, according to El País, some Saudi princes were allowed to pray individually. An exception was also made in 1974 for a guest of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco. The guest was then vice-president in his own country of something called the Revolutionary Command Council. His name: Saddam Hussein.