Madrid Palace Hotel is the narrator’s chosen refuge in Madrid, at once a practical base near the city’s museums and parks and a place where he can postpone departure while continuing a personal account addressed to Vera. Its recurrence links private reflection, travel, and the unresolved question of whether he can leave Spain while she is in Barcelona.

A Familiar Base in Madrid

While staying at the hotel, the narrator takes a break from the intense work of writing, reads El País in the Rotunda, and has tea and pastries. He listens to the harp and to the subdued hum of small encounters beneath the dome, allowing the hotel’s public interior to give him temporary distance from his writing. Although he expects the bill to be high, he decides not to leave Madrid before telling Vera everything.

The hotel’s appeal is partly its familiarity: the staff know him, and the Prado is close by. The Botanical Garden is only a little farther, while Retiro Park and Puerta del Sol are within a five-minute walk. The setting thus places his inward, sustained act of narration amid accessible public landmarks, without making him choose between retreat and movement through the city.

A Pause Before Departure

The narrator later arrives at Chamartín, takes a train to Atocha, and walks to the hotel, where he asks for a room for an indefinite period. He feels unable to return to Norway until he has recovered; leaving Spain is also difficult because Vera is in Barcelona. The contrast he draws is stark: in Oslo he would have only himself—“nothing,” as he puts it.

His stay becomes a deliberate suspension rather than a brief stop on a fixed itinerary. Although he has spoken of visiting the Prado, he does not go until nearly two weeks later, resisting what he experiences as pressure to follow other people’s instructions. During those weeks, he does visit the Thyssen and Reina Sofía museums, places he had not seen for several years. The hotel anchors this interval in Madrid while his choices remain governed by recovery, reluctance, and the pull of Vera’s presence elsewhere in Spain.

The Hotel and the Narrated Relationship

The hotel also frames the letter-like address to Vera. From Madrid, the narrator recalls her postcard from Barcelona, including her question about the magic drink and her declaration that she wanted the two of them to be together forever. He remembers her saying that she had only one man and one Earth, and that she lived with such emotion because she knew she had only one life. He then contrasts those earlier hopes with the way fate changed her plans.

His invitation is correspondingly urgent: he asks Vera for a single day of her life and says he cannot go to Seville without her. The hotel is therefore more than accommodation in the travel narrative. It is the place from which he takes time to continue telling her what happened and makes his appeal, turning a familiar Madrid lodging into the setting for a pause shaped by memory and anticipated reunion.