Paradores and dictators

For Maggie, my partner's, birthday this year we went for a weekend in the Parador in Sigüenza. A Parador is, basically, a posh hotel. Paradores de Turismo de España, is a state-owned commercial company, its sole shareholder being a government department. Paradores were originally conceived, in the first couple of decades of the last century, as a way of promoting tourism in areas that lacked adequate accommodation. The idea was to open up an area, particularly to well off tourists, with a particular eye on the developing motorist market. The first Parador was built in the Gredos Mountains from scratch, on a site chosen by the then King, Alfonso XIII. 

Soon after this first landmark opening some bright spark came up with the idea of converting unused large historic buildings to work as the hotels which would also help maintain the national heritage as well as being attractive to tourists. At the same time, another government committee began the construction of the new Albergues de Carretera. These roadside hostels had petrol pumps and workshops to effect running repairs on the cars and were located at key points on the road network. Seventeen were planned, twelve were built and most of them later ended up being turned into Paradores. One of them was the one at Puerto Lumbreras in Murcia. It closed about 10 years ago when Paradores built a new hotel in Lorca.

There are just short of 100 Paradores in Spain and lots of them are based on refurbished castles, like the one in Sigüenza, and monasteries. Others are architecturally impressive newer buildings and some are nothing particularly special, architecturally, except that they are sited in spectacular locations. The last time we'd stayed in a Parador, before this last weekend, was a couple of years ago when we stayed in Cuenca - in that case it's a converted monastery. 

We're not really well enough off to stay in Paradores very often, though they sometimes have really good low season offers, but every now and again, when we're feeling flush enough to splash out, we do eat in their restaurants. All the Paradores make a thing of promoting regional cuisine and all the restaurants are open to the public and not just to hotel guests. Indeed, in the past, they used to promote regional customs of all sorts and it wasn't at all unusual to be served a beer by someone dressed as an 18th Century kitchen maid or an early 20th century farmhand. Since the chain nearly went bust a few years ago they seem to have abandoned the fancy dress and gone for polo shirt type uniforms throughout their network. The bars are also open to the public so, if you're not looking for a room or a meal, you can still get yourself an overpriced coffee and take the opportunity to have a bit of a look around what are often imposing buildings. I have to be honest and say that sometimes we've been disappointed by the price and or quality of the rooms, food and even the bars but we keep going back because they are quite special places.

There is a, tenuous, link between the Parador chain and a Spanish dictator. It may not be the dictator you're thinking of. From 1939 to 1975 Francisco Franco ruled Spain. Franco managed to manoeuvre himself into the lead position among a group of generals who staged an uprising against the democratically elected government in 1936. The rebels expected to seize power quickly but instead the coup turned into a three year long bloody civil war. Between 1923 and 1930 there had been an earlier dictatorship in Spain. Just like in 1936 it was a group of army generals, this time led by Miguel Primo de Rivera, who thought that the politicians were making a pig's ear of running the country and so mounted a military coup. That coup was tacitly approved of by the King at the time, Alfonso XIII

From about 1927 Miguel became keen on spending on infrastructure projects and founding state monopolies such as Campsa, the forerunner to Repsol, the petrol and energy people, and Telefonica, later Movistar the telecoms company. One of the projects that he supported was the construction of the Parador hotels as a method of fomenting tourism and promoting a positive image, among the rich, about Spain. That's why the first Parador, the one in the Gredos, was opened at that time and on a spot chosen by the King. To push tenuous relationships even further there is a link between Miguel Primo de Rivera's lad, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, and the ideology of Franco's rule. Jose Antonio was the politician who founded the Falange Española which was a sort of Spanish version of the Italian and German fascist parties. He was killed in a jail in Alicante not long after the start of the Spanish Civil War but his party became the official state party of the Francoist regime and still exists.