Asking about Dolores is no longer a taboo subject in Calatayud!
There was a time when Asking about La Dolores in the city of Bilbilita was a heroic act from which not everyone was successful. Even the most daring had to run. But as there is no evil that lasts a hundred years, what used to be an offense today is a source of pride.
And all thanks to this hostel in Calatayud whose rehabilitation managed to make the city sign the peace pipe with all those who until then had asked (with more sarcasm than interest) about it.
The Inn of Dolores , as it is called, is one of the oldest civil buildings in Calatayud and is located in a construction built between the 15th and 16th centuries. And as the canons of the popular Aragonese tradition commanded, it is about a mansion with a flat doorway, wooden beams and a paved patio.
Entering it is like going through a door of time, immersing ourselves fully in that universe of this neighbor of Calatayud from which coplillas echoed for years, like those by Bretón or that popular pasodoble that you're sure to be humming right now.
You can also stay in it!
It is not to reproach, but the truth is that those couplets were the ones that gave Dolores undeserved fame – “she is a very beautiful woman and a friend of doing favors” –. But her story is not wasted: her motherless and disowned by her father, who denied her part of her family inheritance; a situation that practically forced her to marry an ex-soldier who – look where – the only thing she wanted from Dolores was her inheritance that she had pending from her.
Wow, more than enough reasons so that, whatever Dolores did later to make up for all that, it would have been justified. However, we all know that those were not good times for women, much less for those who dared to make decisions about their own lives. And the rest is history –needless to say that if Dolores were a woman of today, I don't think we would have consented to any innuendo about it because, luckily, these are no longer good times for machismo–.
But the reality has been different until very recently. Talking about Dolores has been a taboo subject until practically the end of the 90s, which is the time rehabilitation of the deteriorated palace of the Marquis of Ayerbe, former San Antón inn until 1963.
Since 1997 and after an interesting rehabilitation, it became the Mesón de La Dolores, a historical fact that made asking about Dolores begin to make sense –and its own location–.
The Mesón de la Dolores restaurant, with typical Aragon decoration and the best service and hospitality!
Although it may seem so from the name, it is not just an inn. Actually a rustic three-star hotel, one of the popular jewels to stay within the framework of the Aragón Wine Routes, to which the Calatayud wine route belongs.
El Mesón has 34 more than unique rooms and facilities, such as the museum, with relics such as a trunk that belonged to 'La Piquer' –star of one of the many movies that were shot here, with actresses like Imperio Argentina, among others–; is also the cellar, now a meeting room and private dining room, or the entrance hall, which serves as a reception.
I stay with the central patio-corrala, with an intense Aragonese blue color and totally inclined floors – all you have to do is look at the wooden beams that support them – and that, together with the buildings in the city's Plaza de España, justify the nickname of the 'Pissa de Aragón' with which Calatayud is known.
Really. See to believe, and enjoy. And ask for La Dolores.
You cannot leave Calatayud without visiting the Mesón de la Dolores