At the royal residence of El Pardo Maria Cristina was lodged on the eve of her marriage with Alfonso XII. in 1879. Seven years later in the same palace she wept beside the deathbed of her husband, the father of the unborn king, Alfonso XIII. For a score of years El Pardo was avoided by the queen-mother, until, in 1906, Don Alfonso brought to the suburban palace the English princess who, on the 31st of May of that year, went in state to the church of San Jeronimo to be married to the King of Spain.

From the earliest days of Madrid’s claim to royal favour, over a hundred years before Charles V. transferred the Court from Valladolid to the present capital, the Kings of Spain have had a residence at El Pardo. Henry III., El Doliente, when making some additions to the old town of Madrid about 1461, built a pleasure-house on this site. The attraction of the district was undoubtedly the abundance of boar and bear which found ample cover in the forests which surrounded the capital. Generations of improvident inhabitants have destroyed these woods, but the preserves within the stone wall which surrounds the royal residence are well timbered, and the plantations are full of deer and boar and all kinds of small game. Charles V. transformed the building into a winter palace and left the task of completing it to Philip II., who, one imagines, spared but scant leisure from his colossal building operations at the Escorial to superintend the furnishing of a mere shooting-box. At the beginning of the seventeenth century the original structure was destroyed by fire and the present chÂteau was built by Philip III. Charles III. altered and added to the palace in which he found refuge after the famous riots against Squillaci, and here in the reign of Charles IV. were hatched the plot and counterplot of Ferdinand and Godoy which culminated in the revolution of Aranjuez, the fall of the much-abused favourite, and the deposition of Charles and his crafty sons.

Philip II. by the prosecution of his religious policy, which was fruitful of ruinous wars, had beggared Spain in money and credit. Philip III. succeeded in 1621 to the crown of a country that the Cortes officially described as ‘completely desolated.’ Agriculture and every form of manufacture was fallen into decay, the land was left desert for want of cultivators, the looms were idle, and the wealth of the Spanish-American possessions was swallowed up by the crowd of avaricious and unscrupulous office-holders and their underlings. But if Philip II. had reduced the nation to these straits by his bigoted zeal and arrogant vainglory, his son aggravated the conditions by his reckless extravagance and riotous splendour. When the country’s resources had been taxed to an extent that made further taxation an impossibility, the king, through the agency of his all-powerful favourite, the luxurious Duke of Lerma, raised funds to gratify his prodigal expenditure by the sale of knighthoods and patents of nobility. When that source failed him, he attempted to wrest from the church its silver plate and ornaments, and being terrified out of this resolve by the threats of the bishops, he made a personal appeal to the people. The king’s officers went from door to door begging in the name of the sovereign for the money required for carrying on the business of the Government.

But Philip III. still claimed to be the richest potentate in Christendom; his subjects still believed themselves the richest people in the world. The king could afford to expel 500,000 of his Moslem subjects to Barbary, after robbing them of all they possessed; he could afford to plunge his country into a foolish war to gratify Spanish pride; and he could still afford to indulge his wildest and most extravagant personal whims, of which the rebuilding of El Pardo was one of the least expensive.

The palace, located in contiguity to the village, which consists of about two hundred houses whose inhabitants are employed on the Royal Patrimony, has a length of 432 feet and a depth of 192 feet. A tower commands each corner, and the entire building is surrounded by a moat, 30 feet wide, which once served the double purpose of irrigation and defence. The principal entrance to the estate is through the ancient and beautiful Puerta de Hierro (Iron Doorway), built about the year 1753 by Ferdinand VI. and distant about five miles from the town of El Pardo. From the doorway a wall of stout masonry, six feet high, runs right and left round the demesne for a distance of sixty-two miles. The property is intersected from north to south by the River Manzanares. The stream enters on the Sierra side beneath a high stone bridge, the piers of which rest on the tall rocks that enclose the narrow pass of Marmota. From this bridge may be obtained a magnificent view of the country bounded and framed by the distant snow-clad Guadarrama Mountains. The rugged and broken ground is prolific in evergreen oaks, cork trees, and extensive areas of the cistus shrub. For purposes of defence the estate is divided into twenty departments, and the fifty warders who guard the royal residence are accommodated in twenty-six spacious and well-built houses.

The impression conveyed by the sombre, granite-built palace is distinctly imposing. Several stone staircases lead to the royal apartments, consisting of sixty commodious rooms, nearly all of which are covered with rich and brilliantly coloured tapestries, manufactured at Madrid from designs of Goya, Bayeu, Castillo, and Teniers. The subjects portrayed are landscapes, hunting and country scenes, and passages in the history of Don Quixote. The stucco of the ceilings of most of the saloons is the exquisite work of Roberto Michel, while the many fresco paintings were executed by Patricio CarcÉo, Carducho, Bayeu, Maella, Galvez, Ribera, and Zacarias Velazquez. The fine collection of pictures that once adorned the walls was destroyed by the fire of 1604, and of the forty-seven portraits by such famous masters as Titian, A. Moro, and Coello, only a few remain. The magnificent glass chandeliers are a feature of the royal apartments, and in the Retablo of the Oratory there is a copy of Christ bearing the Cross, by Ribalta, the original of which is in Magdalen Chapel, Oxford. The Court officials are lodged in a commodious building having a complement of a hundred rooms.

To the north of the town is the Prince’s Cottage, another creation of that villa-building monarch, Charles IV. It is a delightful example of the three noble arts that vie with one another to give beauty to the villa—the old silks that cover the walls, the carvings that adorn them, and the magnificent chandeliers and rich, varied furniture, which make a valuable museum of this so-styled cottage. There are also other two palaces called La Zarzuela and the Quinta. Both are surrounded by fine gardens, and contain sumptuous oratories where Mass is celebrated on special occasions. These two buildings are surviving portions of the old edifice. In La Zarzuela Don Fernando, the brother of Philip IV., was wont to organise those little vaudeville entertainments which were christened Zarzuelas. It is no longer used for that purpose, the theatrical performances at El Pardo now taking place in the small but elegant theatre in the palace which Alfonso XIII. had restored when the residence was prepared for the accommodation of Princess Victoria Ena.

To the Royal Patrimony also belongs the parish church and the Capuchin convent of Santo Cristo, situated on the left bank of the river, and hither, on St. Eugene’s day, the people of Madrid journey in crowds. On other feast days, also, the beautifully wooded slopes and shady avenues of El Pardo attract thousands of visitors from the city. It would be difficult to find anywhere in Europe, at the very doors of the capital, such beautiful rustic scenery as that enclosed in this royal estate.

We have said that Charles III. retired to El Pardo after the Squillaci riots, and it is curious to reflect that this best of Spanish kings was sadly out of touch with the character of his own people. He was a man of extraordinary ability, sound experience, and commanding personality. He had the will and the power to carry the government of the State on his own broad shoulders, and to manage the domestic affairs of his subjects into the bargain. He realised the crying need for domestic reforms in his capital, but the MadrileÑos failed to recognise the necessity, and resented his interference. The king found the city ugly, filthy, and insanitary, and he decreed that it should be made clean and kept so. He was the apostle of order and decency, and not understanding the pride of the Spaniards, he could not comprehend that they were affronted by this imperious resolve to bring them into line with more advanced European nations. Moreover, the decree was published by Squillaci, the king’s Italian minister. Squillaci was a marked man from that day, and the clergy who had been made to recognise that the King would tolerate no clerical interference with his policy, fanned the spirit of revolt which manifested itself among the people. In 1766 Charles, having commenced his crusade by cleansing the city, now turned his attention to the national costume. As a dress-reformer he objected to the long cloaks and wide-brimmed hats affected by the citizens, and in March 1766 he issued another decree forbidding their use. Immediately Madrid was in revolt. The king’s Walloon guards were massacred, the detested Italian, Squillaci, sought safety in flight, and for two days the city was in the hands of the murdering, destroying mob. On the third day the king abolished the Walloon guards and promised to rule without foreign ministers. The revolution was at an end, and Charles retreated to El Pardo to reflect upon the situation. The king was convinced that the priests, and particularly the clever, intriguing members of the Society of Jesus, were at the bottom of all the agitation against his policy of reform, and the result of his reflections was made known in the following year when he decreed that every Jesuit should be forthwith expelled from his dominions. The people could not believe their ears, but Charles was firm as a rock. He cleared Spain of the power which was behind the priesthood, and twelve months later he wrung from Rome the papal decree by which the Society of Jesus was temporarily suppressed. Charles III. was engrossed in business more serious than hunting when he retired from the riot of the capital to take counsel with himself in the woods of El Pardo.

Still nearer to the city of Madrid, from which it is only divided by the River Manzanares, is the royal shooting-box, called Casa de Campo, the grounds of which, abounding in beautiful scenery and stocked with well-preserved game, are twelve miles in circumference. A network of channels irrigate the estate, many fountains adorn the gardens, and the great pond is full of carp and other fish. The residence was built in the middle of the sixteenth century by Philip II., who characteristically gave orders that the house was to be surrounded by a forest. To this end a royal decree was issued on January 17, 1562, authorising the acquisition of some adjoining lands, and this tract was augmented by the king’s private purchase of the ancient and noble estate of the heirs of Fadrique de Vargas. Philip, in a fine moment, declined to have their coats-of-arms removed, saying that in a king’s palace the blazonry of the families that had rendered signal service to the State were well placed. In 1582, by order of the same monarch, additional land was purchased; and though his successors have made little alterations in the original demesne, Ferdinand VI., when Prince of the Asturias, increased it by the purchase of a tract of country valued at 1,250,211 reals, and still later a smaller area was purchased by the order of Charles III. The documents relating to the acquisition of these properties have been carefully preserved, and are now in the archives of the royal house. The wall around the estate was commenced in 1736 and finished twenty-two years later; it is twelve feet high and about two feet thick, and is composed entirely of brick and solid masonry.