The Paradors - Hotels of Spain
The Best Historical, Stylish, Cultural and Elegant Spanish hotels.
Parador – literally meant stopper, probably a straw mattress in a courtyard with the owners family, pet pig, mule and any other travellers. Today the meaning of Paradors or Paradores are classy, majestic, luxurious government- run hotels, usually in historical buildings.
The first one was opened in the northwest of Madrid in Avila, 1928. In those times, poor inns and hostels were numerous. They were frequented by travellers and sales people and the standards as were the times, was extremely poor.
It was the great traveller the Marquis Vega Inclán, S.M, who had the idea to create a better class of accommodation for the likes of himself, and also reclaim some of the abandoned national monuments. King Alfonso XIII himself opened the first Parador. Its said that some of his wedding guests had to stay in private houses, due to the lack of suitable accommodation and that, was beneath their usual standard. This helped the King see the necesity for a high-class type of accommodation, and the Marquis got an improvement in the choice of places to stop on the road.
There are castles, convents, palaces and monasteries which have been carefully restored, like the castle-palace of Jarandilla de la Vera in Caceres or the 15th century convent in the Alhambra Palace complex in Granada. Others are brand-new modern structures, like the El Adelantado in the heart of Spain’s largest national park – Cazorla, or the Parador of Vielha on the Spanish/French border with its own spa.
The Parador hotels cover the mainland from the Portuguese border to the Pyranees, from Girona in the north-east to Cadiz in the south-west, and including the Canary and the Balearic Islands as well as the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the north African coast.
The Paradors have achieved a recognisable standard of accommodation, service and local gastronomy wherever they are. Most of the hotels have four star, a handful are five star Grand Luxury hotels and the remainder are three star hotels.
The Parador network has some marked routes such as The Green Spain Route in the wetter north of the country. The Silver Route based on the Roman road built from the north to the south that became known as the silver road. The White Towns Route through the scattered habitations in the dry south of Andalucia.
But these routes, even all together them don’t cover all the Paradors, of which there are 91 at present with plans to have reached 100 hotels by the year 2010.
Each hotel is encouraged to promote it’s local customs traditions, food and wines, and are as unique as each individual town, city or national park that they are situated in.
For the locations of the Paradors and more information see the official website paradores
