Palacio de la Zarzuela

Palacio de la Zarzuela, the more casual and secluded residence of the Spanish royal family outside Madrid, functions in the novel as the primary setting for the king's terminal decline and the emotional transfer of power to his son, Prince Julián. Unlike the formal Palacio Real used for state functions, the Zarzuela is the private home where the aging monarch has been bedridden for months with a terminal illness, his mental faculties eroding as the palace begins the slow transfer of power to prepare the prince for his eventual coronation. It is here that the king's closest confidant, Bishop Valdespino, makes daily visits to his beloved friend, and where the king summons the bishop to his bedside to express his deep concerns about his son's hasty engagement to Ambra Vidal, calling it "rushed" and questioning her motives. The king's final wish, delivered from his sickbed, is for Valdespino to guide Julián, to be his "polestar," and to help him find his way back "to all that is pure" when he goes off course—a charge the bishop accepts with a solemn vow. The Zarzuela is also the place where the king, too weak to watch television, is spared the sight of the Bilbao broadcast that would have "died on the spot" to witness what his beloved country had come to. Ultimately, the palace's commander, Diego Garza, reflects that the only person on earth with power enough to help him after his arrest is the old man living out his final days in a hospital bed at the Zarzuela, though he knows the king will never cross Bishop Valdespino or his own son. The Zarzuela thus stands as the symbolic heart of the old order—a place of private grief, dying authority, and the fraught passage of the crown to a new generation.