Hotel Florida | |
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General information | |
Type | Hotel |
Location | Plaza del Callao 2, Madrid, Spain |
Coordinates | 40°25′11″N3°42′19″W / 40.41972°N 3.70528°W |
Opened | 1924 |
Demolished | 1964 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Antonio Palacios |
The Hotel Florida was situated in Callao Square #2 in central Madrid, Spain. It was built in 1924 and was used as a base by many of the foreign correspondents stationed in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. While based in Spain as a correspondent for the North American News Association (NANA), Ernest Hemingway stayed at the hotel, where he wrote a play. The hotel was demolished in 1964 and a new building for the Galerías Preciados department store was built on the site.
The architect Antonio Palacios designed and built the hotel on a site in the Plaza de Callao, on the Gran Vía (then under construction). It was inaugurated in February 1924. The whole façade of the building was marble.
The hotel's 200 rooms, each with a bathroom, achieved fame during the Civil War, when it became the residence of correspondents, foreign writers and intellectuals featured in Madrid during its siege. Mikhail Koltsov, [1] Geoffrey Cox, [1] Henry Buckley, [2] Ksawery Pruszyński, Wiadomosci Literackie and Herbert L. Matthews [3] were among the members of this community, which also met in the nearby headquarters of Telefónica and the Hotel Gran Vía. For a time Ernest Hemingway [4] and his mistress, later his third wife, Martha Gellhorn used the hotel as their base in Madrid. Hemingway was at the hotel during the Spanish Civil War and on a daily basis he expected a bomb to land on his typewriter. [5] He wrote The Fifth Column during the siege itself. [5] [6]
John Dos Passos also passed through the Florida and immortalized his stay in an article called Room with a bathroom in the Hotel Florida, published by Esquire magazine in January 1938. [7] The last such war correspondent staying in Hotel Florida was O. D. Gallagher, sent by the London Daily Express , said to be the only foreigner who waited to see Franco's troops enter Madrid.
The hotel was also a favourite haunt for Frank Tinker and other U.S. mercenary fighter pilots enlisted with the loyalist forces during the civil war, who relished the opportunity to stop by for a hot bath whenever they could make it to Madrid. [8]
In 2006, the Instituto Cervantes y la Fundación Pablo Iglesias opened an exhibition in New York called the "War Correspondents in Spain", covering the work and adventures of many of the people of the Florida.
The reception and main hall of the Hotel Florida were reproduced in the old train station in Oakland, California, for the filming of the HBO production Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012).
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle and outspoken, blunt public image. Some of his seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works have become classics of American literature, and he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Spain in Flames is a 1937 compilation film made by Helen van Dongen during the Spanish Civil War. Hal Erickson has written that the film "... is remarkable in its willingness to offer both sides of the conflict -- though its sympathies are firmly with the Loyalists." The film consists of two parts. The first, "The Fight for Freedom", was based on film footage from a Spanish government documentary Spain and the Fight for Freedom. A foreword by the then Spanish Ambassador to the United States, Fernando de los Ríos, began one of the film's screenings in New York in 1937.
For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist, most notable for his U.S.A. trilogy.
Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century. She reported on virtually every major world conflict that took place during her 60-year career.
Frank Glasgow Tinker was an American volunteer fighter pilot for the Fuerzas Aéreas de la República Española, during the Spanish Civil War.
Finca Vigía is a house in San Francisco de Paula Ward in Havana, Cuba which was once the residence of Ernest Hemingway. Like Hemingway's Key West home, it is now a museum. The building was constructed in 1886.
The Gran Vía is a street in central Madrid, Spain. It leads from Calle de Alcalá, close to Plaza de Cibeles, to Plaza de España. The street, sometimes referred to as the "Spanish Broadway", is one of the city's most important shopping areas, with a large number of hotels and large movie theatres. However, since the late 2000s, many of these theatres have been replaced by shopping centres.
The Spanish Earth is a 1937 anti-fascist film made during the Spanish Civil War in support of the democratically elected Republicans, whose forces included a wide range from the political left like communists, socialists, anarchists, to moderates like centrists, and liberalist elements. The film was directed by Joris Ivens, written by John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, narrated by Orson Welles and re-recorded by Hemingway, with music composed by Marc Blitzstein and arranged by Virgil Thomson.
Arturo Barea Ogazón was a Spanish journalist, broadcaster and writer. After the Spanish Civil War, Barea left with his wife Ilsa Barea to live in exile in England where he died.
Pauline Marie Pfeiffer was an American journalist and the second wife of writer Ernest Hemingway.
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War is a collection of works by Ernest Hemingway. It contains Hemingway's only full length play, The Fifth Column, which was previously published along with the First Forty-Nine Stories in 1938, along with four stories about Hemingway's experiences during the Spanish Civil War, previously published on magazines between 1938 and 1939.
José Robles Pazos was a Spanish writer, academic and independent left-wing activist. Born to an aristocratic family, Robles embraced left-wing views which forced him to leave Spain and go into exile in the United States.
Adventures of a Young Man is a 1939 novel by John Dos Passos, which eventually became the first in this writer's District of Columbia Trilogy.
Floridita or El Floridita is a historic fish restaurant and cocktail bar in the older part of Havana, Cuba. It lies at the end of Calle Obispo, across Monserrate Street from the National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana. The establishment is famous for its daiquiris and for having been one of the favourite hangouts of Ernest Hemingway in Havana. The bar now boasts a life size bronze statue of Ernest Hemingway positioned in his favourite spot at the end of the bar. On a small plaque hanging in El Floridita, hangs Hemingway's signed quote: "My mojito in the Bodeguita del Medio and my daiquiri in the Floridita".
The Telefónica Building, in Spanish Edificio Telefónica, is a skyscraper in Madrid, Spain, which serves as the registered office of the namesake telecommunications company. It is located in Gran Via 28. At the time of construction it was the tallest European skyscraper with 89 m of roof height, until in 1940, when the Terrazza Martini Tower opened in Genoa.
Hemingway & Gellhorn is a 2012 American biographical drama television film directed by Philip Kaufman and written by Jerry Stahl and Barbara Turner, about the lives of journalist Martha Gellhorn and her husband, writer Ernest Hemingway. The film premiered at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and aired on HBO on May 28, 2012.
Ernest Hemingway owned a 38-foot fishing boat named Pilar. It was acquired in April 1934 from Wheeler Shipbuilding in Brooklyn, New York, for $7,495.[1] "Pilar" was a nickname for Hemingway's second wife, Pauline, and also the name of the woman leader of the partisan band in his 1940 novel The Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway regularly fished off the boat in Key West, Florida, Marquesas Keys, and the Gulf Stream off the Cuban coast. He made three trips by boat to the Bimini Islands, wherein his fishing, drinking, and fighting exploits drew much attention and remain part of the island's history. In addition to fishing trips on Pilar, Hemingway contributed to scientific research, including collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution. Several of Hemingway's books were influenced by time spent on the boat, most notably The Old Man and the Sea (1953) and Islands in the Stream (1970). The yacht also inspired the name of Playa Pilar on Cayo Guillermo. The opening and other scenes in the 2012 film Hemingway & Gellhorn depict a miniature boat replica.
Maurice-Edgar Coindreau was a literary critic and translator of fiction from English into French and Spanish. He is notable for having introduced many canonical American authors of the 20th century—such as William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, Flannery O'Connor and Ernest Hemingway—to the French speaking public.
(Harriet) Virginia Spencer Cowles was an American journalist, biographer, and travel writer. During her long career, Cowles went from covering fashion, to covering the Spanish Civil War, the turbulent period in Europe leading up to World War II, and the entire war. Her service as a correspondent was recognized by the British government with an OBE in 1947. After the war, she published a number of critically acclaimed biographies of historical figures. In 1983, while traveling with her husband, she was killed in an automobile accident which left him severely injured.