Royal Palaces of Spain

by Albert Frederick Calvert

But we are sorry that Borrow did not see the Palace Gardens in April or May, when the view from the Parterre is one of almost unsurpassed loveliness. The Reina, Isla, and Principe Gardens are furnished with a multitude of bridges, grottoes, fountains, and cascades, bordered and surrounded by an exuberance of plants and flowers from England, France, and the East, all bathed by the waters of the Tagus, and made musical with the notes of myriad birds. ‘The Nightingale that in the Branches sang’ returns in his thousands every spring, and we hear ‘The melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, and the pleasing fall of water running violently.’ Here are Oriental trees, palms, and the cedars of Lebanon, and interspersed with them are the first elms introduced by Philip II. into Spain from England, which grow magnificently under the combined influence of heat and moisture. The impressionable and responsive Edmondo de Amicis writes of Aranjuez:

‘The interior of the royal building is superb, but all the riches of the palace do not compare with the view of the gardens, which seem to have been laid out for the family of a Titanic king, to whom the parks and gardens of our kings must appear like terrace flower-beds or stable-yards. There are avenues as far as the eye can reach, flanked by immensely high trees, whose branches interlace as if bent by two contrary winds, which traverse in every direction a forest whose boundaries one cannot see; and through this forest the broad and rapid Tagus describes a majestic curve, forming here and there cascades and basins. A luxurious and flourishing vegetation abounds between a labyrinth of small avenues, cross roads, and openings; and on every side gleam statues, fountains, columns, and sprays of water, which fall in splashes, bows, and drops, in the midst of every kind of flower of Europe and America. To the majestic roar of the cascade of the Tagus is joined the song of innumerable nightingales, who utter their plaintive vibratory notes in the mysterious shade of the solitary paths. Beyond the palace, and all around the shrubberies, extend vineyards, olive-groves, plantations of fruit trees, and smiling meadows. It is a genuine oasis, surrounded by a desert, which Philip II. chose in a day of good humour, almost as if to temper with the gay picture the gloomy melancholy of the Escorial, and in which one still breathes the atmosphere, so to speak, of the private life of the kings of Spain.’

The Jardines de la Reina are of minor importance, but the Jardines de la Isla, comprising the four divisions which are known as Parterre, La Estatuas, Isla, and Emparrado, are filled with natural and created beauties. In the Isabel II. Garden is a bronze statue of the queen, erected to commemorate the political events of 1834. It is surrounded by a handsome iron railing, and completed by eight stone seats and as many marble vases mounted on pedestals. The Jardines de Principe, a much more modern preserve, are divided into four departments, and bisected by avenues that lead to the various small squares and to the Princesa, Apollo, Blanco, and Embajadores Avenues, the last of which terminates in the little Pabellones Garden of the time of Ferdinand VI. In addition to these princely gardens there are the English Garden, remarkable for its carved rock supporting a well-modelled swan; the Chinese Garden with its banana plantations; and the Garden of the Princess, acquired in 1535, and adorned in 1616 with a mechanical clock, decorated with twelve bronze figures that play on bronze trumpets. On the banks of the swiftly flowing river are the paddocks of the Crown, where camels and llamas roam, and a stud farm, where are bred English and Spanish blood horses and the beautiful cream-coloured animals of the Aranjuez stock.

The auxiliary palace called the Casa del Labrador, or Labourer’s Cottage, built by Charles IV., is a remarkable structure, being a series of boudoirs, à petit Trianon, worthy of a Pompadour. The ceilings are painted by Zacarias Velazquez, Lopez, Maella, and other artists, and the walls of the back staircase are decorated with scenes and figures of the time of Charles I. At the top of the staircase is figured a balcony, on which are leaning the handsome wife and children of the painter, Z. Velazquez. The gilded bronze balustrade of the main staircase contains gold to the value of £3000, and the marbles over the doors are very fine. On the ground-floor of the building, which is composed of three stories, are thirteen statues by Spanish sculptors. In the centre of the hall is a marble figure representing Envy, and around the apartment are twenty busts of Carrara marble. Among the treasures of the palace are many Japanese vases and bronzes of great artistic value, marble busts of Minerva and Mars, a group representing a sacrifice in honour of Venus, and an enormous, beautifully carved mahogany fountain. The decorations consist of platinum, artistically worked pavements of Buen Retiro porcelain, and the most gorgeous silk embroideries and tapestries bordered with gold; while the furniture includes priceless chandeliers, Sèvres vases, candelabra, and clocks. A chair and table in malachite, a present from Prince Demidoff to the ex-Queen Isabella of Spain, is valued at about £1500. The apartment known as Retrete is adorned with a composition resembling marble in the Moorish style and Etruscan low relief, and furnished with crimson coverings bordered with gold, while all the appointments of the hall, the capricious clocks and floral stands of bronze and glass, the table of rock crystal, and the wealth of marbles, all contribute to the magnificence of this so-called Casa del Labrador.

V
MIRAMAR

The most modern of the many royal residences in Spain is the palace which the queen-mother built for herself and her young family in the most easterly province on the northern coast of the Peninsula. Queen Maria Cristina had been Regent for three years when in 1889 she determined to make a home between the mountains and the sea in a spot far removed from the etiquette and stress of the capital and from the sad memories which were associated with the ancient palaces of Castile. Her Majesty spent her first summer holiday at Miramar, the capital of Guipuzcoa in 1894, and here, overlooking the Bay of Biscay, Alfonso XIII. was brought up among and in the heart of his own people. Here he was prepared by a rigorous course of study to assume the duties of the high destiny to which he was born, and here also he learnt to ride and shoot, to swim and handle a boat, and to excel in every form of manly sport. At San Sebastian the dignity and restraint of royalty is largely relaxed, and the English visitor realises more clearly than in any other part of the country how intensely democratic is the Spaniard at heart. The King of Spain is more in touch with the masses of his people than the ruler of any other European nation. He is an anointed sovereign and the most august personage in the land; but he is a Spaniard, he belongs to his people, he is one of themselves. In Madrid court etiquette keeps the sovereign at a different altitude from his subjects, but here he rides and drives abroad, generally unattended, and sets an example of princely amiability and unaffected kindliness which distinguishes all ranks of the Spanish nobility. The line of demarkation between the nobles and the people is so clearly defined that it never has to be emphasised. In their relations there is no unbending on the one side, there is no servility on the other. A grandee of Spain does not imperil his dignity by joining the cotillon at the Casino; a duchess can drink tea at the crowded tables of a public café without taking thought of appearances.

In San Sebastian the sovereign is not the High and Mighty Señor Don Alfonso XIII. of Bourbon and Austria, Catholic King of Spain, but rather is he ‘le chevalier Printemps,’ and the respect with which he is everywhere greeted is based as much in affection for his person as in deference to his exalted station. In all the festivities and social functions of the fashionable watering-place, His Majesty takes a prominent part; and although roulette is forbidden at the Casino while Royalty is at Miramar, no other restriction is imposed upon the gaiety of the town by the king’s presence. Don Alfonso is president of the Yacht Club and of the Horse Show; he distributes the athletic championship prizes, and is among the guns at every important shoot; the homely, merry festival of the Urumea would be incomplete without him; his attendance in the Avenida de la Libertad is as necessary as the sunshine to the Carnival of Flowers. The queen-mother’s handsome team of four Spanish mules is to be met with every day in the neighbouring country, and the king’s motor car is a familiar object of the landscape between San Sebastian and Biarritz. It was from San Sebastian that he motored to the bright little French town to make his formal request for the hand of Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, and it was to Miramar that he brought his affianced bride to present her to the queen-mother and the Spanish people.

If the Spanish coast had been searched from one end to the other, it would have been impossible to have found a more picturesque spot than the bay of San Sebastian, where the blue billows from the North Atlantic bring their long journey to an end on a stretch of the most golden sands in Europe. During the summer months the crested rollers, following one another with the regularity and precision of Highland regiments at the quickstep, sweep through the narrow channel between Santa Clara and Mount Orgullo, and, making the semicircle of the Concha, break their formation at the private landing-stage beneath the royal palace of Miramar, and fall out about the rocky base of Mount Igueldo. Seen from the royal yacht, the Giralda, which always lies in the bay when the royal family are in residence at Miramar, the town of San Sebastian lies in the base of a crescent, the horns of which are tipped with the old light tower at one extremity and the castle of La Mota at the other. Behind the town Mount Ulia raises its wooded height in the middle distance, and beyond it, as far as the eye can see, the white-capped sentinels of the Pyrenees complete the view. One can sip one’s chocolate on the terrace of the restaurant which crowns Mount Ulia, and gaze on San Sebastian spread out like a panorama in the valley, or watch the sunlight reflected from the white cliffs of France, or try to make out the sword-cut in the coast-line by which the tide flows, as through the neck of a bottle, into the inland sea, which laps the very door-steps of Pasajes and divides it into the two sections of San Juan and San Pedro. There are seasons when the Bay of Biscay is the incarnation of elemental fury, when the inviting natural harbour of San Sebastian is a death trap for any vessel that flies to it for shelter. When the south and south-west winds are blowing at the end of September, and the hurricane is driving the raging billows of the Atlantic before it; when even whales are caught by the stampeding waters and tossed like weeds on the sandy bosom of the Concha; when the roof of the Royal Nautical Club is swept by the waves, and the breakwater at the mouth of the Urumea crumbles before the ferocity of the gale; then is this north-east coast of Spain anathema maranatha to those that go down to the sea in ships. But by the end of September, the holiday season in San Sebastian is over, and the holiday-makers are distributed over every country in Europe. The Court is removed to Madrid, the Palace of Miramar and the Casino are closed, the Giralda seeks a surer anchorage, and the fishing-fleet is safely berthed in the land-locked harbours of Pasajes.

The construction of the Royal Palaces of Madrid absorbed over a quarter of a century, and a whole army of labourers were twenty years on the Escorial before it was ready for occupation by Philip II. Five hundred men built the royal residence of Miramar in four years. Two architects collaborated in its construction—Mr. Selden Wornum, who laid down the general plan, and Señor Goicoa, who was in charge of the building operations and revised the plans as the work proceeded. The materials used, with the exception of some special tiles, which had to be brought from England, are Spanish, the marble and stone having been brought from the provinces of Guipuzcoa, Valladolid, and Burgos; the iron for the different stages from the ‘Altos Hornos’ and ‘Vizcaya’ factories of Bilbao, and the metal work from Eibar.

The real Casa de Campo de Miramar is composed of three departments: the palace, the offices, and the stables and coach-houses. The palace is a three-storied building, in the style of an English country house. On the ground-floor, at the entrance, is a spacious central gallery, which extends nearly the whole length of the palace, dividing it into two parts. On the right are the king’s study, the library, the oratory, the reading-room and the dining-room, which is rectangular, and boasts a magnificent balcony. On the left are the hall, the official reception rooms, and the billiard-room. Between the study and the library is a large drawing-room. On the first floor are the apartments of the king and queen and the old playroom of his Majesty, all communicating with each other by a terrace which overlooks the sea and the garden. From the king’s room a tower is reached, which is surmounted by a flag-staff. The rooms occupied by the royal servants are on the upper floor. A long gallery connects the main building with the house in which are lodged the chief officials of the palace, and the stables, which are fashioned on the most modern English pattern, form a separate building.