Our particular love letter to the 'grande dame' of Madrid hotels
Dear Ritz,
Something unusual is going to happen today. For the first time in the Ritz's 117-year history, there will be checkout only. Not even a check-in. No 'Welcome' will be heard, only 'Thank you' and 'See you soon'.
Promise us something, or promise us something (are we on a first-name basis?) : we don't want to see a single tear. Here we must not cry: we must celebrate.
On the 28th we want you, like the diva that you are (we will use you), she says goodbye without looking back and dragging the train of the silk dress because of those several-inch-thick rugs she has.
You have to look forward. Let's not fall into nostalgia, but Let's play for a little while that game so greedy that consists of missing.
If walls could talk...
The Ritz rugs. We will miss them. Also the soft silence, the mille-feuille of Alfonso XIII of Goya and the terrace in the first days of summer.
We do not speak for ourselves, who are vulgar mediums: We speak for Madrid.
When that light bulb 'that-never-goes-out' goes out on the 28th, your big gimme . It is not a poetic license: That's what they call the hotels that cities are proud of.
Le Bristol, La Mamounia, Crillon, Claridge's, Langham, Gleneagles... They are part of this tribe, they are the temples to which the crazy faithful of this lay cult pilgrimage.
In Madrid there will be magnificent hotels (some very close) and when he is reborn as a Mandarin Oriental he will be crazy.
Yet the Ritz, this Ritz, the grand lady who hands you violets when you leave, the old lady who has seen it all will be gone.
You must have seen a lot within these walls. Actually, what has not happened between these walls? has had madonna , to kings with crowns and without crowns, to spies, to Fidel Castro, Michelle Pfeiffer …
Its halls have been trodden by bad and good people, because every hotel is a reflection of society. Whatever name we say, if you have set foot in Madrid, you have been to the Ritz.
Actually, what has not happened between these walls?
Charles and Diane? They were. Nelson Mandela? Yes. Hemingway? But what questions do we ask? Clinton? Of course. Sintra? Of course, if Ava was swarming. Brad Pitt? And did we miss it?
We like to imagine Grace Kelly opening these ivory doors. The poor woman declared that she had to become a princess to be allowed in. Her daughter, Carolina, stayed in suite 511 during the wedding of the King and Queen of Spain. Would she hang her baby blue Chanel in the closet or would she leave it on one of the mustard-colored sofas? It was not the best night of her life. Carolina, she comes back next year.
Dear Ritz - how we like them its myths and legends . What good handles they are always for a hotel.
Our favorite is the one that prays that For decades, actors and entertainers were prohibited from entering. That is why Grace Kelly did not enter as Grace but as Grace.
She is not entirely true, although we love to let her out on the table. To protect inner peace it was preferred that they not come because they always bring merriment and flashes.
James Stewart he had to avail himself of his military status, but we know that Ava Gardner appeared here. And of lola flowers We don't even talk. What those two women must have been, with those priestess physiques, slipping through those rooms with a drink in the bad and the fur coats slipping off them...
We like to imagine its lights, but also the shadows
We like to imagine the lights, but also the shadows. There was a time (you've had time for everything, bandit) of being a blood hospital. Durruti died here in 1936.
It was also spy shelter during World War I and that image is one of our favorites: we love to think of the whispers in the central courtyard, with the piano in the background.
Indeed, that piano never shuts up. Yesterday I played As times goes by, as a concession to nostalgia in these days when everything happens for the last time.
How many last times take a bath in this marble bathtub. It will be the last time. take a photo in this mustard sofa that overlooks the meadow. It will be the last time. Go down the carpeted staircase (more rugs) will be the last time. Close the door with the chain. Opens the hand-painted wooden minibar. Feel the weight of the key, shaped like a room key. Come with your lover. It will be the last time.
And so. It will be the days of the last times. The last times are not sad. They are… last.
Also yesterday we heard a dialogue (these are days of listening to conversations like spies) that summed up his spirit. It was a couple who had spent a single day. On leaving they told the doorman, always elegant: "We have come to say goodbye. We will return to the inauguration." They were Spanish, eccentric and cheerful. He replied somewhat sadder: "time goes fast".
The future will come and it will be better, dear Ritz, because he always is. There is no way to be sad with the new stage because in a year he will have the only important thing he lacked: a pool.
Before closing, let us gloat over something. It is something very simple, but it is what really defines a hotel like you: the air that remains inside, the people.
We've gotten corny and, at this point, we don't give a damn. Let us look at that theater performance that It hasn't stopped since 1910.
Let's see how this choral cast behaves on this multi-storey stage; how do they move the waiters at breakfast , as if they were dancers, how each actor has the piece of stage of him.
In this function there women wearing Balenciagas trench coats (it was Vetements) and ladies who should have worn Balenciaga (it was Cristóbal); they also look Spanish couples who could be doctors (how we like to imagine in hotels) and oriental girls who want to have churros for breakfast. There are a lot of Stan Smiths on the rugs at the Royal Tapestry Factory and that's nice. Congratulations from us to the director of this play. It is normal that it goes well: They have been practicing for a century.
Dear Ritz, we know that he needs a reform. You know it too. Chain closures are very romantic, but they may have to be reviewed. The marble showers are exquisite, but Mandarin Oriental, who knows everything about well-being, will turn them into paradises.
Just as the stretcher tables disappear from some rooms and nothing will happen because other furniture will arrive that will also be a product of its time. The 21st century may not be a stretcher table.
we hope that do not fill it with absurd screens full of functions that we will not need, that they take advantage of the hundreds and hundreds of meters of incredible carpets; They look like hallucinations.
Now, dear Ritz, rest easy; will need strength for the new era. These Mandarin Asians are demanding and will want her hard. Thank you for giving us so many stories.
We insist: on the 28th we don't want to see a single tear. Or maybe one. See you in a few months, old lady. The function will start again.
Sincerely:
We (and Madrid)
We will be back!