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Keeping the Best of
the Past at the Westin Palace, Madrid
“The
question is how do we retain the special identity of this hotel within the
corporate model?” asks Carlo Suffredini. We are sitting in the domed
rotunda of Madrid’s Palace Hotel. Late afternoon sunlight filters through
the stained-glass, the bands of sky-blue and the garlands of roses above
us, adding to the illumination of a chandelier shimmering with light.
Delicate strains from a harp are background to tinkling glasses and
conversations in a mix of languages. Madrileňos and foreign hotel guests,
Americans but also English, German, and French, are enjoying coffee and
pastries around small tables this first weekend after the New Year. And
for a moment, time seems to stand still. If not for the contemporary dress
of the crowd, we could be part of a scene in the Gilded Age.
 The
amiable, Italian-born general manager has posed an interesting question.
Since March 2000 when the historic property became a Westin hotel and part
of the Starwood Luxury Collection, it has undergone refurbishment of rooms
and renovation of operations systems to bring them up to international
corporate standards. A state-of-the-art business center is in place
adjacent to the front desk. Club Neptuno, a fully equipped fitness club
with all manner of exercise machines and training equipment, has been
installed on the rooftop level where it looks out as far as Retiro Park.
“All 466 rooms now have the Westin ‘heavenly’ beds, and
within the next six months, all bathrooms will be equipped with the
‘heavenly’ two-headed shower,” Suffredini tell us. “The sixth floor is
being turned into an executive level with its own private reception area,
VIP lounge, meeting room, and the latest communications technology. The
rooms will be refreshed; full breakfasts will be served in the lounge, and
butler service will be part of the experience.”
He pauses for a moment and smiles looking out to the
animated gathering around us. “But the local crowd doesn’t care about such
innovations,” he says. “To them, the hotel remains the Palace, the
favorite meeting place for the Madrid community. Saturday and Sunday
afternoons, you will find the top-class market here. They’ll come for a
drink or coffee, to celebrate a special time.”
| Branding, he maintains, has not
interfered with the essence of this property built in a record eleven
months by the fabled hotelier César Ritz in time for King Alfonso
XIII’s wedding in 1912. And clearly it still retains the identity of
the original green and cream, marble and gilt Palace -- from the
frescoes of classical scenes in the lobby, to the grand stairway
leading to the luxury-shop-lined second level punctuated by mirrored
doors, to the circular lounge beyond that opens up to the greater
circle of the rotunda and at its center, surrounded by marble pillars,
the heart of the hotel, the recess beneath the dome: El Jardin de
Invierno which, no matter how many times one has seen it, never fails
to take the breath away. |
The amiable, Italian born general manager: Carlo
Suffredini |
Still there are losses, we told Suffredini, and went on
to relate how earlier in the day, we had strolled the marble-floored
perimeter of the rotunda off which the hotel’s salons, lounges,
restaurants, and ballrooms are located. We looked into the wood-paneled
English bar with its cozy arrangement of green and navy sofas and
continued on to La Cupola, the Palace’s gastronomic restaurant which we
recalled for its collection of classical Spanish paintings and classical
Spanish preparations. Only to our dismay, we found it was no longer there.
In its place was a Chinese restaurant!
“Ah yes,” the general manager sighed. “We found La
Cupola was competing with La Rotonda,” and he gestured to a brightly lit
area further along the perimeter. “Since the menus of both restaurants
were similar, we decided to outsource the space to something entirely
different.”
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An old friend: maitre d’ and sommelier Angel Sastre
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The space is strikingly decorated with
swaths of brocaded silk in shades of iridescent green and gold,
strings of paper lanterns, and pagoda-shaped furnishings. And judging
by the number of people we saw headed in its direction that evening,
the cuisine is a draw. But somehow we could not warm to the idea of
having Chinese food in Madrid, and so we took Suffredini’s advice and
booked a table at La Rotonda. At 9
p.m., we walked around the rotunda to the open yet romantic dining
expanse furnished with gold-leaf furniture and Grecian urns where to
our surprise, we were greeted by an old friend: Angel Sastre who was
maitre d’ and sommelier of La Cupola during our visit a few years ago.
We remembered him well, how he had told us his original ambition was
to be a matador, how he had helped us select the right dishes and
perfect wine last time around. Now he’d moved over to La Rotonda
which, he said, combines the cuisines of both restaurants with an
emphasis on Mediterranean flavors. |
Confidently we put ourselves in his hands once again and
were rewarded with a delightful dinner that included a salad of radicchio
and micro-greens dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette whose trace of honey
added just a touch of sweetness, a pungent seafood broth, lobster wrapped
in white asparagus and topped with salmon roe, a thick tender sirloin with
a delicious gravy that had simmered in a slow oven overnight, and a
marvelous turbot paired with fried artichoke slices in a red wine sauce --
all of which were accompanied by an excellent Rioja. As we lingered over
coffee, having splurged on desserts of cheese mousse and a pineapple
carpaccio with banana ice cream, and listened to a young man play haunting
refrains on a Spanish guitar, we had to agree that corporate branding has
not dimmed the illumination of this unique treasure of Madrid
Perhaps staff longevity has something to do with it.
With fourteen years on the job, Angel is junior compared to others, some
of whose tenure exceeds four decades. “During the Civil War, the hotel was
closed down, and it functioned as a hospital,” Suffredini had told us.
“Surgery was performed in the rotunda beneath the domed skylight; it
wasn’t until 1946 that it became a hotel again. There are people still on
staff who began working here at that time. The hotel is a part of their
lives.
“There is also the longevity of guests,” he continued.
“A woman from Ecuador lived here for 15 years. Finally she returned home
but left a large amount of luggage behind her. Each year she’d send a
Christmas card asking us to please keep the luggage, she’d be back.
Finally when she was 95 years old, we decided not to wait any longer and
sent the luggage to her.”
He went on, “And then there are the traditions. Next
door to the hotel is one of the most famous churches in Madrid. Every year
on Good Friday, the Christ statue is carried in a procession. As it goes
down the street alongside the hotel, a supplier for the hotel who is also
an amateur singer steps onto a little balcony outside a first floor hotel
room. They stop the procession in front of him, and for about ten minutes,
he sings Saeta, which are songs like a prayer, very Spanish, like a
Flamenco. It’s worth coming here on Easter to see this alone.
“Then there is the Bull Fighting Fair at the start of
the season in May when the best bull fighters come to town. They stay at
the hotel, get dressed here before they go to the arena. That is another
tradition of the Palace.”
In the ways in which the hotel is a center for
Jewish-related events, it harkens back to even earlier traditions that
have only recently begun to become reclaimed. During our first visit to
Spain, we met a young man in the Palace’s jewelry shop who told us, “Cut
any Spaniard and you will find Jewish blood.” That was in 1993, a year
after the 500th anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, a
time when the nation began to acknowledge the consequences of that act and
reach out to descendents of long-ago exiles. Since then, we have seen many
examples of the resurgence of Jewish life throughout Spain and an interest
in reclaiming this lost heritage.
“We have a good relationship with the Jewish community
in Madrid,” Suffredini told us. “We have frequent kosher weddings and bar
mitzvahs. The kitchen is sealed; the meshgiach comes in to inspect it. We
import the kosher wine from France. Last October a group of European
rabbis were here celebrating an anniversary of Maimonides, the 12th
century Jewish sage. From here they organized a visit to Cordoba, where
Maimonides was born, as well as Seville.” Among the general manager’s
plans is a Passover package that would combine a visit to Madrid and
Israel. “There is a direct three-hour flight from Madrid to Tel Aviv every
day,” he told us.
“This is a historic place and I feel it all the time,”
he says. “The socialists declared fascism is over on a balcony of the
House of Parliament right across the way. That was less than thirty years
ago. Spain is still a new democracy. The people feel the youngness of the
democratic free life. Despite the terrorism, the attack on the train
there is an optimism. The spirit is great. It is very close to Italian
which I why I feel so at home here.”
Last May the wedding of Spain’s Prince Philippe brought
dignitaries from all over Europe to Madrid. As one would expect, many
stayed at the Palace. One of them, the prime minister of a wealthy
country, approached Suffredini. “I have not been in Madrid since I was
married many years ago. We honeymooned in Spain and spent some days here
at the hotel,” he told him. “It is amazing to see it is the same as it
used to be. Nothing has changed.”
Of course much has changed in the nation, the city, and
the Palace. “But that is our challenge,” Suffredini maintains, “to move
forward, to stay with the market. But also to keep the best of the past.”
The Westin Palace, Madrid
Plaza de las Cortes, 7
28014 Madrid, Spain
Phone (34)(91) 360 8000 Fax (34)(91) 360 8100
Photos by
Harvey Frommer
# # #
About the
Authors: Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer are a wife and husband team who
successfully bridge the worlds of popular culture and traditional scholarship.
Co-authors of the critically acclaimed interactive oral histories It Happened in
the Catskills, It Happened in Brooklyn, Growing Up Jewish in America, It
Happened on Broadway, and It Happened in Manhattan, they teach what they
practice as professors at Dartmouth College.
They are also travel writers who specialize in luxury properties and fine dining
as well as cultural history and Jewish history and heritage in the United
States, Europe, and the Caribbean. (More
about these authors.)
You can contact the Frommers at:
Email: myrna.frommer@Dartmouth.EDU
(myrna frommer)
Email: harvey.frommer@dartmouth.edu
Web:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~frommer/travel.htm.
This Article is Copyright © 1995 - 2008 by Harvey and Myrna Frommer. All rights
reserved worldwide.
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