The Hall's Concerns

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Literature · Subcategory: Literary fragments · Authors: Alonso Quesada

In this excerpt from Las inquietudes del Hall , Alonso Quesada (1886-1925) draws a very particular, irony-laden view of the English colony that occupied the Canary Islands at the beginning of the 20th century. The hall referred to in the text is that of the Metropole hotel, now disappeared.

« The Hall of that Hotel was, certainly, the only legitimate Hall on the island. All the others simulated more or less English halls, but they did not have the imperturbable frosted whiteness of that Hall. It was a Hall perhaps like those of the great hotels in London; somewhat smaller, but of identical national substance. It always saved the Hotel from any possible financial ruin. There were no longer any open British hotels. After the Great War, this hotel was the true bearer of England's prestige on the island as the supreme master of colonial hotels. All the English hotels ended; only some boarding house floated, lost, in a corner of the beach or among the eucalyptus trees of a mountain village. Tourism was declining, but the unchanging and eternal travelling queue took full refuge in this wonderful Hall Hotel. [...]

It proudly possesses white columns – a matte white, like the collars of the women in the Hall; long mirrors; graceful armchairs with bright cretonne cushions; charming marble statues: a small domestic and sentimental Greece that suits the Hall for a mysterious baedeker reason. The Hall also has a feminine and light table, with its writing paper engraved with the Hotel's name in English lettering, that lettering with a pleasant undulation, like the grace of a miss in ceremonial evening dress through the Hall. All the doors open onto the Hall as if to see what the Hall's clean gaze orders. Nothing can be imagined in the Hotel outside this linear correctness of its Hall. The Hall is the perfect life of the colony, a gentle life without worries. »

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