Hoteliers in Toledo and throughout Spain would do well to make an offering to Santa Martapatroness of the brotherhood, for the welcome and service she provided to Jesus in Bethany. The reason is that the patron saint (with the connivance of the politicians in power) continues to intercede for the interests of the hotel lobby and those close to the sector.
Some renowned hoteliers have spent decades deciding what to do and what not to do in Toledo. We do not want to say that this sector is not important for the city (especially for the jobs it generates) and that it should not be taken care of, but to a certain extent and with the appropriate regulations. You can watch a neighbor open or increase the height of a window to the nearest millimeter, but if you walk through the narrow streets of the city you can find palaces or historic buildings where part of the facade has miraculously been collapsed at night until dawn. luxury hotels.
When the El Greco Institute was built on the Paseo de San Eugenio, great care was taken to place it back, so that it would not affect the urban profile. On the other hand, when the Eurostars hotel was planned in the adjacent block, a partial modification of the urban plan was carried out to allow a height greater than that authorized in the area.
In his ambitious The “Toledo emerges” plan, according to Toledo Mayor Carlos Velázquezannounced a few days ago with great fanfare a performance in the old 16th century building on San Juan de Dios Street, where many residents of Toledo were born, as it served as a provincial maternity hospital, to be transformed into a hotel, “the result of a public-private collaboration”.
To compensate (or to disguise), In the Alamillos del Tránsito building, in addition to a parking lot, six housing units will be built! Objects: the ancient cultural center of San Ildefonso, the famous cemetery of the nuns located next to the Cristo de la Vega, will of course be dedicated to a large gastronomic center. It’s still striking that in an age of fast food where fewer and fewer people are cooking, Master Chef-type TV shows have become so popular.
If Rilke returned to Toledo, he would find his beloved San Vicente Museum (the old provincial museum) where he spent hours enchanted in front of the Immaculate Conception in the Oballe Chapel, El Greco’s masterpiece, transformed into a bar to cocktails. We do not know what will be the fate of the cloistered convents which remain, if they are not already, without nuns, but we fear the worst. And it is possible that at a not too distant date, an urban planner will show his chest when a large ultra-modern hotel will be built in a relevant place in the city, with a strong visual impact (yes, we, Toledo, want also our Guggenheim!).
Today, we talk a lot about the difficulty and often the impossibility of access to housing, about areas of stress (this euphemism masks how the right to housing of all citizens recognized by the Constitution and which affects everything to this sector of the population most in need and with fewer resources, namely young people). We can also talk about cities being “stressed” by the hotel and tourism industry.and we are not only talking about the proliferation of tourist apartments, or the occupation of entire blocks of the historic center by hotel infrastructures, but also the diversion of squares and other public spaces for the installation of terraces with pergolas and others permanent elements. such as fences and large planters that make it difficult for pedestrians to pass and use.
Patio of what was the provincial maternity ward, where it is planned to build a hotel. Photo provided by the Provincial Archives of Toledo
And it’s not that we don’t like, as tourists, coming to a city with good hotels and restaurants where we are well served, or sitting on a terrace to enjoy a good beer and pleasant company ( by the way: to someone who two years ago He drank a beer for 2.50 and now it costs him 3.50, the official data, according to which hotel prices in general have increased in average of 5% last year, can only make him laugh.
In addition, It’s increasingly difficult for Toledo residents, even if you were once a regular customer, to sit down and have just one drink.since the tables are generally reserved for tourists to eat). It’s a question of priorities. Perhaps priority should be given to the creation of new housing for residents or increased aid for the rehabilitation of existing housing, rather than increasing the number of licenses for reception establishments.
In this distribution of functions which, at one point, was made at an obscure European table, Spain was to be the EU’s service country, a paradise for British and German retirees. It is for this reason that we must welcome other initiatives that seem very positive to us and that the mayor has promised, such as the expansion of one million square meters of the Polígono industrial land, a good opportunity to attract businesses productive.
This capricious columnist must also applaud other proposals from the mayor’s project which are very attractive for our city, such as the creation in what was the RNE building, among others (for example, a sword and damascene factory, that of Ballesteros), a day center for the elderly; or the project assign the palace of Plaza Abdón de Paz to a museum in Toledoeven if it perhaps does not make much sense to make it a provincial museum (for that we already have the Santa Cruz Museum): Toledo needs, as we stated a few weeks ago in these pages, of a municipal museum.
Recovering the heritage of the Roman circus, establishing the so-called Cinema City in the abandoned Polvorines park or acting on the no less abandoned district of Azucaica, to avoid flooding once and for all, are also part of the mayor’s promises. We’ll see.
