Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Posted by : John Ross on Jun 15, 2007 - 11:40 AM Madrid

Or, if not Spain's most haunted house, its most famous haunted house. The Palacio de Linares, these days home to the Casa de America, can now be visited on Sunday morning and Mondays (good idea, almost everywhere else visitable in Madrid is closed on Monday). Pin your ears back for a gripping tale of the rich and powerful, souls doomed to walk the Earth (albeit inside a luxurious mansion), incest, and murder most foul, with a colourful lady fraudster for light relief. Get your spine chilled here.

The Palacio de Linares sits on one corner of the Plaza de Cibeles, itself most famous as the place where football giants Real Madrid and their supporters congregate to celebrate important victories. In spite of which, it is a very exclusive neighbourhood. The other corners of the Plaza de Cibeles are occupied by the phantasmagorical Palacio de Comunicaciones, the immensely imposing Bank of Spain and the Palacio de Buenavista, the General HQ of the Spanish Army, in other words, this area is not so much upmarket as beyond money.

The Linares Palace was built towards the end of the nineteenth century by a rich Basque businessman, Mateo de Murga, and occupied by his son, José de Murga, Marquess of Linares, and his wife, Raimunda. The couple were much gossiped about, at a time as gossipy as the fin de siècle and in a country as gossipy as Spain, in other words we are talking about a lot of gossip, more stirred than settled by the marquesses' reclusiveness. The story got around that Raimunda was the child of Mateo by another woman (a vulgar cigarrera, cigar-girl, for added shamefulness), in other words that she and José were half-siblings. And they had received special dispensation from the Pope to live together, as long as they did so chastely. In spite of which, the story or legend says that the couple had a baby daughter, Raimundita, who was murdered at birth.

When the Palacio de Linares was thoroughly restored at the end of the nineteen-eighties, workers and night watchmen told of strange noises, inexplicable footsteps, and voices from beyond the grave. And Carmen Sánchez de Castro, a parapsychologist who appeared from nowhere, produced spooky recordings supposedly made in the building and in which the spirits of the couple and their child said things like "I never heard her call me mother," "I have no mother," and "Get out!" The recordings were widely publicized (in Spain, this was the early days of private TV and, more significantly, late-night shows). However, "serious" parapsychologists (as good an example of oxymoron as you'll find anywhere) were sceptical* and denounced the recordings as fraudulent. Carmen Sánchez de Castro was found not to have any "recognized" qualifications as a parapsychologist and had been more or less totally discredited even before being arrested for passing dud cheques. But this tends not to be mentioned when, even now, broadcasting time is so vacuous that the tapes are dug out and re-aired.

Now, I believe the Palacio de Linares is worth visiting in its own right, not just as Spain's most famous haunted house - I have a visit reserved for next week, so I'll be able to tell you for certain after that. And its current occupant, the Casa de America, is a very worthy cultural institution of considerable interest in itself, its main aim being to "generate a forum of ideas and debate on economic, political, scientific, technological and cultural aspects of Latin America." Whatever your motivation, the obligatorily guided tour takes place on Sunday mornings and Mondays, on the hour, and lasts an hour, and each tour is limited to 20 visitors, so booking ahead is practically essential, though the website of the Casa de America says reservations are admitted up to ten minutes before the start of each visit.

For more information:
Website of the Casa de America: http://casadeamerica.es

*Read "felt their toes being trodden on."

UPDATE! (22 - 06 - 07)
In spite of extending the visits to Saturday, the Casa de America has been overwhelmed by demand, and has announced that they are booked up until December.