with the spirit enjoyment In the 1920s, the Florida Hotel, by the architect Antonio Palacios, to whom Madrid owes so much. Inaugurated on February 1, 1924, a century ago, it was the first in the capital to have a bathroom in each of its 200 rooms.
It was built in an iconic environment, the Callao Square, where La Adriatica, the Casa de la Prensa (now Palacio de la Prensa), the Callao Cinema and the Carrión Building (famous for the Schweppes poster) would also be built. And then, in 1936, the war came.
Under siege for three years, Madrid became the place from which to report for many international journalists and the Hotel Florida became their headquarters. They had to cross the bombed Gran Vía to send the chronicles from the Telefónica Building.
The American John Dos Passos He dedicated one of his famous chronicles to him, ‘Room and bathroom at the Florida Hotel’, in January 1938, in which he describes the life of a city at war. AND Ernest Hemingway He was photographed in his rooms by Robert Capa.
The Nobel Prize-winning writer mentioned the hotel in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and in ‘The Fifth Column’, his only play, about a couple locked in the hotel while bombs fall outside. The same bombs that destroyed part of the hotel, that he knew how to recover from and see the city resurrect. What bombs couldn’t do, modern life could.
The Florida was demolished in 1964 and was built in its place Preciados Galleries. And Madrid was never the same again.
Source: Lasexta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
