The renewed history of the Gran Hotel Inglés by Agustín Pery
On 27 July 1886, La Correspondencia de España announced "with satisfaction" to its readers that "the active and well-known owner of the Café Inglés, Don Agustín Ibarra, has just acquired the magnificent house under construction at 10, Calle del Lobo, with the exclusive purpose of using it as a hotel, and at the same time, on the ground floor, which is extremely spacious, to build a restaurant on a par with the best in the world".
131 years later, the street is no longer called del Lobo but Echegaray Street.
131 years later, the street is no longer called Calle del Lobo but Echegaray, we have travelled not to London but to New York in order not to "omit any sacrifice in terms of furniture" and we have found our renowned head chef in Madrid and not in Bordeaux, but Carmen Cordón and Ignacio Jiménez keep intact the purpose that encouraged Agustín Ibarra more than a century ago and which the chronicles of the time reflected with flowery verbiage: "They did not omit any sacrifice, both for the acquisition of furniture and of all the modern advances they could use to apply to their new home".
Hotel on a par with the best in Europe
The spirit, the challenge, the desire and the illusion of this couple of hoteliers based in Mallorca are these: that the Gran Hotel Inglés once again becomes a reference of luxury, exclusivity and elegance with the conviction that a hotel should be a home where the client more than a guest is a guest who today as then enjoys his stay in a "hotel on a par with the best in Europe".
Restoration by David Rockwell and his team
If at that time La Época praised in its pages the excellence of a unique hotel in Madrid for having "a lift, a bathroom on each floor, lighting, steam heating and all the advances that make life more comfortable", today the Gran Hotel Inglés combines the best hotel advances of the 21st century without renouncing the serene elegance without stridency that prevailed in the 19th century.
Today, like Don Agustín in his day, the new owners have sailed the seas in search of an ally who could capture and transfer to today the magnificence of those lounges, dining rooms and bedrooms. David Rockwell and his team have been enthusiastic about the project and have used their genius and experience, backed by a multitude of international awards, to ensure that their first total intervention in a hotel in Spain has unique and exclusive furnishings to match what Doña Carmen and Don Ignacio are looking for in their first hotel in the capital, just as Don Agustín wanted for his Inglés.
Our restaurant
Our restaurant "installed on the ground floor" will be as "extremely spacious" as the one described in El Liberal on 1 August 1886, although we have renounced "serving tables of up to 300 covers" because today "it is also difficult in this Court". Fortunately, the level of our gastronomy and its chefs has grown so much that we have not had to travel all the way to Bordeaux to enlist Willy Moya, our head chef, in this marvellous adventure. Now he is designing our cuisine and preparing the dishes for a menu with which he wants, we want, to recover and reinterpret without adulterating those tasty recipes full of nuances that delighted the diners of the time and turned Don Agustín's house into a gastronomic reference point in the capital.
Luxury rooms and freestanding bathtubs
We have reduced the number of rooms from 72 to 48 and, in a show of strength, our guest-friends will no longer have to cross from one end of the corridor to the other to go to the ladies' or men's room. We have already told you that in addition to a shower, we have also installed a bathtub in the rooms, which was inconceivable at that time and is not easy to do nowadays. We promise that our rooms will be "spacious, light and airy" and that with the help of Willy Moya and his team it will be "fully demonstrated" what an enthusiastic chronicler of La Iberia said one day after its inauguration: "the cuisine of the new hotel is excellent and its wine cellar is even more excellent".
The Gran Hotel Inglés was inaugurated on 17 December 1886. Exactly on that day 131 years later, Madrid and the Barrio de las Letras will once again have a "truly remarkable" hotel with 48 "comfortable and elegant rooms and reading rooms". We promise that the dining room will have "electric light and the table service is luxurious", there will of course be "a lift and an improved heating system" although we certify that it will no longer be necessary "to use fuel to keep the house at a very pleasant temperature".
Enjoy the new Gran Hotel Inglés
As the cost of living has risen dramatically since the times of Don Agustín, our financial team deeply regrets that the cost of the work and fitting out of the building has far exceeded the "90,000 duros" invested by Mr. Ibarra, forcing us with deep regret to rule out keeping the cost of the overnight stay at the ten pesetas of the time.
Everything is to ensure that our house, yours, has not only the best staff, led by its General Manager Javier Polo, until now director of operations at the Villamagna Hotel in Madrid, but also "elegant and comfortable rooms, private cabinets for lunches and meals, round table and a la carte service; chef and pastry chef of recognised merit, wine cellars stocked with national and foreign wines and spirits, bathrooms (we have read that they now call it a spa), heating, lift, telephone (and yes, usb, wifi, handy...) and that our staff will be able to attend to your needs.) and that our staff will be able to assist you in (almost) all languages.
Don't worry about the bus to the railway stations. The central location of the hotel in one of the most central, monumental, dynamic and culturally vibrant districts of the city guarantees that you will be able to travel around the capital and the surrounding area by all types of mechanical or motorised means.
