Hotels with History and Hotel Stories, the series we publish every 15 days in The New Barcelona Post, reaches its 25th chapter. This round number deserves to be dedicated to a special one: the one that has historically been the city's grand hotel, the one with the most "red threads" to pull and one of the oldest that remains at the top, El Palace Barcelona, an establishment that was born as the Ritz and for many still symbolically carries this name in their memory.
To put the arrival of this brand in our city into context, we must talk about a prominent figure we recently discussed in this series thanks to the Grand Hotel Central: Francesc Cambó, founder along with Gonzalo Arnús of the company Hotel Ritz Barcelona SA. Cambó, president of the Lliga Regionalista and a regular at the Ritz in Madrid during his long stays as a deputy in the Cortes, became convinced that Barcelona deserved its own.
Through the mediation of the director of the Madrid establishment, who was Catalan, he personally approached the hotelier César Ritz, the man who had invented the very concept of a modern luxury grand hotel, a Swiss man considered "the hotelier of kings and the king of hoteliers," to convince him to build an establishment with his signature in the city. Ritz agreed, although he would not live to see it finished: he died in 1918, a year before the inauguration.
The project was entrusted to the architect Eduard Ferrès Puig, the same one who designed the Palau Maricel in Sitges and the Damians department stores, later El Siglo, on Pelai Street. It was built on what was then Cortes Street, today Gran Vía de les Corts Catalanes. The official inauguration was scheduled for October 22, 1919, although sabotage in the pipes and a strike by kitchen staff, added to the general strike shaking the city —as Barcelona was experiencing the so-called Bolshevik Triennium— with the very vivid hangover of the historic La Canadenca strike of that same year, delayed the opening until November 23, with 190 rooms and 400 employees.
The grand hotel of the bourgeoisie was born, literally, in the midst of the social tension that pitted that same social class against the labor movement. Ten years later, with the impetus of the 1929 International Exposition, the hotel was expanded with 60 more rooms.
A first turn of events
The underlying social tension would end up erupting within the building itself. On July 22, 1936, just as the Civil War began, the hotel was collectivized by the unions and became the headquarters of FOSIG (Federación Obrera de Sindicatos de la Industria Gastronómica - Workers' Federation of Gastronomic Industry Unions): a portrait of Lenin presided over the lobby, the establishment changed its name to Hotel Gastronómico Nº 1 and its basements served as an air-raid shelter during the bombings of the city.
After the war, the hotel recovered its name and its international vocation with one of its most uncomfortable episodes: in 1940, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler stayed there, during his visit to a Francoist Spain that had just begun its dictatorship.
It was precisely in that post-war decade when ownership changed hands: textile magnate Julio Muñoz Ramonet, one of the great beneficiaries of the black market and his relations with the new regime, acquired the hotel, along with other noble estates in the city, such as the Palau Robert and the residence of the Marquis of Alella on Muntaner Street. The establishment became a regular venue for auctions, fashion shows, grand parties, and literary competitions such as the Premio Nadal. It was also in those years when, in the old warehouses on the ground floor, the legendary Parrilla del Ritz (1942) opened, which was probably Barcelona's most exclusive ballroom.
Any international social event taking place in Barcelona had a high chance of being held at the hotel. © Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona
And it is precisely in that golden post-war era when it is worth dwelling on the characters who passed through its lounges, rooms, or suites, although trying to list them all in a single chapter is, simply, mission impossible (perhaps the 26th chapter of Hotels with History could be, directly, a second part dedicated only to proper names). There are some, however, who cannot wait, like Xavier Cugat, the "king of rumba" from Girona who triumphed in golden Hollywood.
Cugat did not stay at the Ritz, but lived there. Installed almost permanently until his death in 1990, surrounded by his chihuahuas and with a golden Rolls-Royce with California license plates almost always parked at the door, he even paid part of his debts to the hotel by handing over signed drawings and caricatures.
His neighbor at different times was Salvador Dalí, who also did not have an apartment in Barcelona: the Ritz was his home in the city, to the point that on one occasion he brought a stuffed horse up the stairs as a gift for Gala. It is easy to imagine, therefore, that when Walt Disney traveled to Catalonia to meet with Dalí before going to Cadaqués, the prior meeting could well have taken place in the hotel itself, in the only Barcelona residence the painter from Figueres had.
Josephine Baker performed at the Ritz Grill, and names like María Callas, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Cary Grant, or Frank Sinatra passed through its lounges and famous bar. Sinatra probably holds the record for the shortest stay: a breakdown in his plane forced him to make an emergency overnight stop, and with no rooms available, the hotel provided him with a suite with extra beds where his entourage finished waiting with a paella, minutes before they were notified that the plane was already repaired.
In March 1987, a hotel lounge, with a piano set up for the occasion, was the scene of the first meeting between Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé. The meeting was key for Barcelona, the song they composed and sang together. Among the less documented, but equally delightful anecdotes, is that of a young Roger Moore serving drinks to his table companions during an Ondas Awards ceremony in the 60s, still years before becoming the third James Bond on screen. Later, regulars like Woody Allen, a frequent guest, would arrive, among many other well-known faces from all areas of society.
Before, in 1975, a new change of ownership would arrive, a much less glamorous one. The economic deterioration of the Muñoz Ramonet family ended with the hotel's seizure, which passed into the hands of Joan Gaspart through Inmobiliaria Sarasate, becoming integrated into the Husa chain, which in 1985 would assume absolute control of its management. These were years in which the city's former grand hotel was diluted among the group's dozens of establishments, losing part of the exclusivity and unique character that had defined it in its first decades: just another asset within a chain, no longer the independent jewel it had been.
Goodbye to the name
It was precisely the ownership of the name that triggered the definitive conflict: the heirs of Muñoz Ramonet, who had reserved the ownership of the "Ritz" brand, entered into litigation with Husa in 1988. The legal battle dragged on for years, with a first resolution in 1996 that already prohibited Husa from using the name, until in 2005 it was definitively settled: the hotel had to forever renounce being called Ritz.
"Forced by a court and not by choice, El Palace Barcelona was born, a name chosen precisely to evoke luxury and tradition without being able to pronounce the word everyone had in their heads"
Overnight, plaques, stationery, crockery... any physical trace of the word had to disappear from the building. Thus, forced by a court and not by choice, El Palace Barcelona was born, a name chosen precisely to evoke luxury and tradition without being able to pronounce the word everyone had in their heads. However, keen observers will be able to distinguish some shadows of its past both on the facade and on a plaque at the entrance; you just have to look closely.
After the 2016-17 renovation on the way to its centenary, the Art Suites were created, dedicated to César Ritz himself and five cultural figures. The hotel took flight again and regained its place among the city's greats. Today, the past of Cugat and Dalí coexists with very current details, including a live music club soon to reopen, heir to that Parrilla del Ritz where Josephine Baker played, sang, and danced.
The hotel also experienced an unexpected episode during the pandemic: with international tourism halted and the hotel empty of guests, many Barcelonans then discovered its terrace, today one of the hotel's great icons, converted, for the first time, into a space open to the city itself. One more rarity for an establishment that, in its category, has been one of the few large hotels in Barcelona capable of resisting the constant interest of major international luxury brands in putting their name and management on it, because the hotel operates at full speed.
The courts took away its name, though not its soul: a hundred years later, for half of Barcelona, it is still the same old Ritz.
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