The Pazo de Lourizán: the 20 million it will cost to save the pazo where the loss of Cuba and the Philippines was assumed

• Fortunes Marta Ortega buys a fabulous 16th-century country house in A Coruña for three million

• Controversy The strategy of the Franco to not deliver the Pazo de Meirás

• Properties El Pazo de Meirás: from Franco's summer home to Sánchez's possible summer getaway

Its silhouette is parallel to the first steps of the Portuguese road that cross the

But for years no one has stopped to see its fountains, welcomes itself within its walls or is fascinated by its statues.

that exist in Galicia and, despite its historical importance, one of the most forgotten.

Located in Pontevedra, Herbalonga, it was the official home of President Eugenio Montero Ríos.

On the beaches that surround it, Alfonso XIII and other members of the Spanish high society of the 1930s spent the summer.

Now, on the eve of the 21st century,

Dilapidated, neglected and admired only from a distance, it owes its decline to the indecisive bureaucracy that left its rooms unswept long before the democratic transition.

, the Pazo de Lourizán has survived thanks to its solid architecture, although it is dying due to the institutional paperwork that began its marathon in the 40s

this noble and ruined

One of the access stairs to Pazo de LourizánNoela Roibas

Fiction surpassed reality

"If the palace had been in

," the writer Lola Fernández Pazos claims to LOC.

Author of the novel

(Harper Collins, 2022), her book tells the story of a Galician industrial family that she decided to locate in this stately residence

"That family existed, but they didn't live there.

she describes.

What she did not know was that the great sales success of her

was going to bring with it

A journalist by profession, Fernández Pazos studied the papers given to him

the Marquis of Alhucemas, Manuel Saiz de Vicuña.

Through an extensive study he was able to learn about the evolution of an ambitious project

A close friend of the regent María Cristina, Montero Ríos was the promoter of this architectural creation oxygenated by

from water lilies to camellias and eucalyptus.

That until today decorate and enliven the area.

The journalist Lola Fernández Pazos, author of the novel 'El Pazo de Lourizán'Noela Roibas

The history of the

, when that greened place

.

A dovecote remains almost intact from this period.

says the author.

But without a doubt, the first turning point in the evolution of the pazo was in the 19th century, when the site was bought by

Some time later,

into a country house whose style is far from other Galician stately homes.

presidential residence

In 1832, Eugenio Montero Ríos, an influential minister under Amadeo I, acquired the site and commissioned the construction of a family summer home there, where he lived until 1914.

of the Council of Ministers and the Senate during the Restoration.

At this time, he made a large part of the decisions and

But, without a doubt, there is one that deeply marked Hispanism.

. In Paris, Montero Ríos refuses to sign the loss of the colonies

One of the 18th century fountains of the Pazo de LourizánNoela Roibas

There he received a message

It is 1898, but the history of Spain must continue.

Being Lourizán a small part of it.

which once belonged to the territory of the pazo.

"On the beaches of the area

In 1943, "the daughter of Montero Ríos and Marchioness of Alhucemas, Avelina García-Prieto Montero-Ríos,

It becomes the property of the Savings Bank, which sells it to the State.

One of the statues of the Pazo de LourizánNoela Roibas

That year, Francisco Franco

But the building, but not its exterior flora, was forgotten by the institutions.

On July 9, the Xunta reached an agreement with the Pontevedra Provincial Council.

that still sings habaneras of abandonment.

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