Some of the best views in Spain are to be had from its paradors, distinctive buildings turned into reasonably priced hotels run by the State, writes GAVIIN CORBETT
YOU COULD safely say there are more swallows than people in Sigüenza, which has a population of 5,000, but both they and its animal residents seem equally at home in its crumbly, decorative streets.
Everywhere you turn there is ornament and colour; everywhere the mantle of history forces itself through the thin crust of modernity. You get the sense that, although the people take it all in their stride as part of the backdrop to daily life, such detail seeps its way into and enriches their souls.
Sadly I didn’t hang around long enough to discover such effects for myself, although my choice of accommodation for my short stay certainly did give me a flavour of the town’s past.
I stayed in a rebuilt Moorish castle that traces its origins back to Roman times. It was my first stop on a tour of paradors in central Spain – all within a 150km radius of Madrid – which took me across the burning summertime plains of Castile and La Mancha.
Before setting off on my trip what I thought I knew about paradors amounted to this: they are a range of historic buildings converted to hotels and run by the Spanish state. I was expecting top-end hospitality, for sure, but I feared these would be stuffy, even spooky, places, filled with cobwebbed suits of armour and paintings of tragic infantas whose eyes would follow you around the room. They didn’t turn out to be so.
By the end of the trip, any preconceptions I had about this type of accommodation were laid to rest. While the founding principle of paradors was the protection and regeneration of old and important buildings, two of the paradors I visited – in Toledo and Segovia – were modern structures. The older buildings I stayed in, far from creaking with the clutter of the past or being tackily “Bunratty-fied”, are very much in the modern world. Important historic details have been maintained but are sometimes presented in a tongue-in-cheek way, the décor on the whole is sensitive but up-to-date, and the layout where possible follows logical lines.
In short, I didn’t ever feel I was on a Scooby Doo set, and the clientele ranged across all ages, from singles to young couples, and families with children to older folk.
A defining feature of the paradors is that they occupy some of the best locations. Sigüenza’s, housed as it is in a citadel, is on high ground overlooking the town, and has a view of the giant cathedral and the hills beyond.
Later I travelled to the Unesco World Heritage city of Cuenca, where the parador, a converted 16th-century monastery, clings to the side of a gorge. Across the chasm is the beautiful old town, and an iron footbridge leads you, by and by, to its top cultural attraction: a museum of abstract art in a 14th-century house on the edge of a cliff. The paintings and sculptures here date from the 1960s and 1970s when Spain was still under the thumb of the Franco dictatorship. The palette is a dark one and the themes are violently subversive. Traditional tableaux and icons of Spanish culture – Easter processions, King Felipe II – are treated with confusion and disdain.
In contrast, the streets outside the museum are a joy, particularly the café-lined Plaza Mayor spread at the foot of the cathedral, whose almost pristine façade, reconstructed in the last century, seems to cast a soft light of its own.
Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of this region is how empty the landscape is – dramatically, sublimely so. It is so relatively lacking in signs of human life that when you reach a town – any town, but particularly a beautiful town like Chinchón – it’s like stumbling on an oasis.
All white walls and brown-tiled roofs, Chinchón has a distinctly southern flavour. Indeed, the gorgeous parador here, a converted 15th-century Augustinian monastery, is reminiscent of a small Moorish palace in Andalusia, with its rose gardens, apricot trees and tinkling water features. The Plaza Mayor here feels like no other in Spain. Settling down to a glass of the local anís at a café, you notice that the ground is surfaced in red dust and that the sides of the buildings are a jumble of wooden galleries. It’s like a huge Elizabethan theatre or even a bullring, which is exactly what the plaza becomes every Saturday in summer.
For many people, the jewel of this region is the old Spanish medieval capital of Toledo, and it’s hard to disagree. This is the city of El Greco. His paintings are to be found all over town – in the cathedral, in the Santo Tome church, in the Casa del Greco, in the fabulous Museo de Santa Cruz – and his best-known subject, apart from religious figures, was the city itself.
If the parador had been around in the 16th century, you imagine the painter would have spent many pensive hours with his easel propped up on its terrace, for it commands what must be the best view of one of the most famous and beautiful urban scenes in the world.
An intimate city of twisting lanes and hidden patios, Toledo is dominated by two gigantic structures. The forbidding Alcázar was a fascist stronghold (in a largely Republican city) during the civil war, and still pulsates with a tremendous negative energy.
Staring it down is the cathedral, seat of the primate of Spain and one of the world’s great treasuries of religious art. You could spend as much time inside the cathedral as on the rest of your visit to Toledo and still not do it justice. Every square foot of surface rewards study, but the highlight must be the towering altarpiece, which tells the story of the New Testament in statue-filled panels set amid tumbling streams of gold filigree. You feel you could climb it handhold by handhold all the way to heaven.
The road from Toledo to Ávila takes you through a different type of landscape as it winds upwards through the pine-covered Sierra de Gredos. Looking back from Ávila’s faithfully preserved 11th-century walls, the peaks stand dark and jagged across a bleak, brown plateau. It’s this sense of isolation, this sense of the town as a redoubt against coming hostile forces, that gives Ávila its uniquely eerie atmosphere. It’s a sort of dowdy place, but that’s part of the charm; the paseo, or evening stroll, is the social event of any day, and gangs of old men huddle around benches in snickering conversation, breaking off to pass good-humoured remarks at ladies of all ages.
Mention Ávila to most Irish people, and one association springs to mind: St Teresa. She is everywhere here, in name, in statuary, and on the packaging of seemingly all foodstuffs produced in the town.
The closest you will be able to get to the 16th-century mystic is the Convento de Santa Teresa, which was built over her birthplace. Beside it is a small museum containing effects and relics of the saint, among them one of her fingers, grotesquely adorned with a gaudy emerald ring.
Before I went on the trip, I’d heard a story that Franco used to keep one of Teresa’s mummified hands by his pillow, and I found myself wondering whether this finger was from the same one.
The last stop on my journey was Segovia, rightly renowned for its 800m-long (and neck-crickingly tall) Roman aqueduct and a fantastical cathedral with a steeple straight out of Oz’s Emerald City. The best way to take it all in is from – where else? – the parador, just out of town.
Viewed from a poolside sun lounger, the lawns sloping away before you, eagles hovering above, the city is a surreal sight, like a painted backdrop from an old technicolour film.
A warm evening sun, a glass of Rioja in hand, nature abounding, a city of dreams – maybe I had climbed that altarpiece.
Go there
The first parador was founded in 1928 as a means to promote tourism in Spain. Since then, this state-run boutique hotel chain has grown to 93.
Rooms in the paradors start from €55 per person per night. However, there are a wide range of promotional rates available giving discounts of up to 30 per cent.
Map Travel, 36 Upper OConnell Street, Dublin 1, is the official Irish agent for the paradors. Call it at 01 8783111 for availability and the best deals. Aer Lingus has daily flights from Dublin to Madrid. One-way fares start at €54.99 including taxes and charges. See aerlingus.com or contact MAP Travel maptravel.ie.
The food in the paradors is outstanding, and always reflects local cuisine.
The towns featured in this article are in a highland region with a big hunting tradition, and so game features heavily on the menu, as well as other hearty, meaty staples such as veal and roast suckling pig.
The fixed menu across all the paradors costs an average of €32.
Paradors in towns in this article:
Sigüenza: Plaza del Castillo S/N, 19250 Sigüenza, Guadalajara, 00-34-949-3901-00, siguenza@parador.es
Cuenca: Subida a San Pablo S/N, 16001 Cuenca, Cuenca, 00-34-969-2323-20, cuenca@parador.es
Chinchón: Los Huertos 1, 28370 Chinchón, Madrid, 00-34-918-94-08-36, chinchon@parador.es
Toledo: Cerro del Emperador S/N, 45002 Toledo, Toledo, 00-34-925-22-18-50, toledo@parador.es
Ávila: Marques Canales de Chozas 2, 05001 Ávila, Ávila, 00-34-920-21-13-40, avila@parador.es
Segovia: Carretera de Valladolid S/N, 40003 Segovia, Segovia, 00-34-921-44-37-37, segovia@parador.es
