The Hotel Madrid

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Historic sites · Year: 1900

"After an intense night of comings and goings from the Hotel Madrid, where Franco and his family were staying, to the Military Government, the uprisers were trying to take over the Civil Government, which at that time was at calle de Triana, near to San Telmo Park". (Emilio González Déniz, Crónicas del salitre)

Browsing through the endless photos and portraits hanging from the walls of the Hotel Madrid is like flicking through the pages of a history book. Just like a child showing off his new toy, Paco Yánez loves showing a living history through these pictures, enhancing the legend of Madrid.

While Paco goes into details of this legend, I stop at an old photo of rusty pigments that shows the mature, chiselled face of Gregory Peck draped in the unmistakable attire of captain Ahab, and I can't help asking Paco about him: "So, did he actually stay here when came to film Moby Dick?" "No, he didn't stay here, but he used to come round the hotel for a drink and for some social life", Paco Yánez responds, as he glances at the photo. 

Along from the tatty picture of Gregory-Ahab, I also notice a huge poster right behind the hotel bar of the film Tirma, filmed on the island in 1954. Leading actress Silvana Pampanini was at the centre of one of the most juicy and excentric anecdotes ever to happen at the Madrid, as Emilio González Déniz reveals in Crónicas del salitre, a recreation of events that occurred in the Canary Islands during the 20th century.

Silvana Pampanini was, midway through last century to cinema what Scarlett Johansson is today: a hard hitting actress arousing passions wherever she goes, with the exception that Johansson is much more talented at acting than her Italian counterpart, who usually played second fiddle with diva-like airs and graces, and whose film career never reached the heights of other Italian actresses like Sofía Loren or Gina Lollobrigida.

On arriving at the suite of the Hotel Madrid, which was nothing more than the largest room situated on the top floor of the hotel, Pampanini demanded they put music on in her room, but not just recordings, but proper live music. The trouble was that there were no pianos available at all on the island, so one had to found on Tenerife. The commotion caused by the arrival of the piano, firstly at the harbour of Las Palmas and then around the plaza Cairasco and the Alameda de Colón, was just a ripple compared to when the crane hurriedly brought in from the harbour started to lift the piano up to the suite of the Italian diva.

However, Gregory Peck and Pampanini were not the only ones, compared to some who left indelible marks in history and who stayed at the Hotel Madrid. According to one Registery form at the hotel, of which there is a framed copy hanging on one of its walls, on 17th July 1936 none other than general Franco installed himself in room number three along with his family. He had come over from the Canary Military Command at Santa Cruz de Tenerife to Las Palmas, for the memorial service of military governer in Gran Canaria, general Balmes, killed in strange circumstances when he accidentally shot himself in the stomach with his own pistol.

Much has been speculated, and is still done today, about this supposed accident which would seem to be much more than just a providential coincidence, since it provided the perfect excuse for Franco to travel to Las Palmas. The next day Franco set off by sea -he didn't leave by car as he had been warned of the possibility of a murder attempt near the tunnel at La Laja beach- to the airport of Gando, and from there to Tetuán via Casablanca on board the Dragon Rapide to lead the Spanish army in Morocco and undertake the military strike which would lead to a long and bloody civil war over the following three years.

Currently, room number three in which the Franco family stayed the night and where they plotted the coup d'etát -it is unlikely they spent much time there- is just one of the many rooms on offer to guests, with gorgeous views out over the hotel terrace, the plaza Cairasco and the Gabinete Literario.

Writers, journalists, actors, script-writers, singer-songwriters, philosophers, artists and other leading figures have left their mark at the Hotel Madrid, set on an island mid way between three continents.

Many travellers have turned this ocean outpost into a slightly less transient place and made it much more liveable.

The establishment first opened its doors as a café-terrace in July 1900. In 1910 it started trading under the name of ‘Hotel Madrid Moderno’ in a two storey building around a central courtyard crowned by a pergola. Its present day façade was designed back in 1928, while in 1937 work was carried out to turn it into a 4 storey building.

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