When Manolete left his room 42 on his way to the Coso de Santa Margarita on August 28, 1947, where he would meet his death and thus become a legend, the Hotel Cervantes de Linares was already a traditional establishment, with 71 years of history. Today, after a brief hiatus and with 146 years behind it, it reopens its doors. It has been closed for nine months and now offers restaurant and lodging services again thanks to the local company Gesline Control SL, which was awarded the building last June after a bankruptcy filed by the previous owner, who was affected by the pandemic surprised with a credit to make reform to which he could not respond.
Saving the unreachable Hostal de los Reyes Católicos in Santiago de Compostela (from the 16th century), the Posada del Peine in Madrid (1610), or the Hotel Oriente in Barcelona (1842), the Cervantes enters the list of oldest hotels of Spain in its own right. The Gran Hotel La Perla in Pamplona (1881), the Santa Catalina in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (1890), the Alhambra Palace and the Ritz (1910), the María Cristina in San Sebastián (1912) or the Alfonso XIII in Seville ( 1928), which usually head lists of the most traditional national hotels are later.
The Cervantes is a landmark establishment for the inn in the province of Jaén. It was built in front of the bullring and the gardens of Santa Margarita in 1876, at the height of the mines in Linares, very close to where the first office of the Banco Español de Crédito outside Madrid (the Second Mother House, they called it in the entity) and the branch of the Bank of Spain. And he will be forever linked to the history of bullfighting: in room 42 of him, Manolete dressed and spent his last hours.
One third of its rooms
The reopening has not taken place at full capacity (only cafeteria and a third of the rooms, according to Radio Linares-Cadena Ser) but it does arrive on time for the San Agustín Fair, one of the most traditional in northern Andalusia and which begins on the 27th. It represents eight jobs in a town like Linares, especially affected by unemployment.
The Hotel Cervantes is located in front of the Linares bullring and the Santa Margarita gardens – donated to the city by the Marquises of Linares, who also built what is now Casa América in Cibeles (Madrid) – and the Paseo de Linarejos. Less than a ten-minute walk away are the Minor Basilica of Santa María la Mayor and the Andrés Segovia House-Museum, the Madrid Station, the Hospital de los Marqueses de Linares, the Raphael museum in the Pósito, or the Bullfighting Museum and the Lagartijo tavern. Also on foot you can go shopping and have tapas, one of the great attractions of Linares, visiting the shops and bars in the center.
Other nearby attractions are the La Garza Golf Course, the Piélago Roman Bridge and the Ibero-Roman City of Cástulo. Baeza is 25 kilometers away and Úbeda 32 kilometers away, both cities declared World Heritage Sites.
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