The most modern of the many royal residences in Spain is the palace which the queen-mother built for herself and her young family in the most easterly province on the northern coast of the Peninsula. Queen Maria Cristina had been Regent for three years when in 1889 she determined to make a home between the mountains and the sea in a spot far removed from the etiquette and stress of the capital and from the sad memories which were associated with the ancient palaces of Castile. Her Majesty spent her first summer holiday at Miramar, the capital of Guipuzcoa in 1894, and here, overlooking the Bay of Biscay, Alfonso XIII. was brought up among and in the heart of his own people. Here he was prepared by a rigorous course of study to assume the duties of the high destiny to which he was born, and here also he learnt to ride and shoot, to swim and handle a boat, and to excel in every form of manly sport. At San Sebastian the dignity and restraint of royalty is largely relaxed, and the English visitor realises more clearly than in any other part of the country how intensely democratic is the Spaniard at heart. The King of Spain is more in touch with the masses of his people than the ruler of any other European nation. He is an anointed sovereign and the most august personage in the land; but he is a Spaniard, he belongs to his people, he is one of themselves. In Madrid court etiquette keeps the sovereign at a different altitude from his subjects, but here he rides and drives abroad, generally unattended, and sets an example of princely amiability and unaffected kindliness which distinguishes all ranks of the Spanish nobility. The line of demarkation between the nobles and the people is so clearly defined that it never has to be emphasised. In their relations there is no unbending on the one side, there is no servility on the other. A grandee of Spain does not imperil his dignity by joining the cotillon at the Casino; a duchess can drink tea at the crowded tables of a public cafÉ without taking thought of appearances.

In San Sebastian the sovereign is not the High and Mighty SeÑor Don Alfonso XIII. of Bourbon and Austria, Catholic King of Spain, but rather is he ‘le chevalier Printemps,’ and the respect with which he is everywhere greeted is based as much in affection for his person as in deference to his exalted station. In all the festivities and social functions of the fashionable watering-place, His Majesty takes a prominent part; and although roulette is forbidden at the Casino while Royalty is at Miramar, no other restriction is imposed upon the gaiety of the town by the king’s presence. Don Alfonso is president of the Yacht Club and of the Horse Show; he distributes the athletic championship prizes, and is among the guns at every important shoot; the homely, merry festival of the Urumea would be incomplete without him; his attendance in the Avenida de la Libertad is as necessary as the sunshine to the Carnival of Flowers. The queen-mother’s handsome team of four Spanish mules is to be met with every day in the neighbouring country, and the king’s motor car is a familiar object of the landscape between San Sebastian and Biarritz. It was from San Sebastian that he motored to the bright little French town to make his formal request for the hand of Victoria EugÉnie of Battenberg, and it was to Miramar that he brought his affianced bride to present her to the queen-mother and the Spanish people.

If the Spanish coast had been searched from one end to the other, it would have been impossible to have found a more picturesque spot than the bay of San Sebastian, where the blue billows from the North Atlantic bring their long journey to an end on a stretch of the most golden sands in Europe. During the summer months the crested rollers, following one another with the regularity and precision of Highland regiments at the quickstep, sweep through the narrow channel between Santa Clara and Mount Orgullo, and, making the semicircle of the Concha, break their formation at the private landing-stage beneath the royal palace of Miramar, and fall out about the rocky base of Mount Igueldo. Seen from the royal yacht, the Giralda, which always lies in the bay when the royal family are in residence at Miramar, the town of San Sebastian lies in the base of a crescent, the horns of which are tipped with the old light tower at one extremity and the castle of La Mota at the other. Behind the town Mount Ulia raises its wooded height in the middle distance, and beyond it, as far as the eye can see, the white-capped sentinels of the Pyrenees complete the view. One can sip one’s chocolate on the terrace of the restaurant which crowns Mount Ulia, and gaze on San Sebastian spread out like a panorama in the valley, or watch the sunlight reflected from the white cliffs of France, or try to make out the sword-cut in the coast-line by which the tide flows, as through the neck of a bottle, into the inland sea, which laps the very door-steps of Pasajes and divides it into the two sections of San Juan and San Pedro. There are seasons when the Bay of Biscay is the incarnation of elemental fury, when the inviting natural harbour of San Sebastian is a death trap for any vessel that flies to it for shelter. When the south and south-west winds are blowing at the end of September, and the hurricane is driving the raging billows of the Atlantic before it; when even whales are caught by the stampeding waters and tossed like weeds on the sandy bosom of the Concha; when the roof of the Royal Nautical Club is swept by the waves, and the breakwater at the mouth of the Urumea crumbles before the ferocity of the gale; then is this north-east coast of Spain anathema maranatha to those that go down to the sea in ships. But by the end of September, the holiday season in San Sebastian is over, and the holiday-makers are distributed over every country in Europe. The Court is removed to Madrid, the Palace of Miramar and the Casino are closed, the Giralda seeks a surer anchorage, and the fishing-fleet is safely berthed in the land-locked harbours of Pasajes.

The construction of the Royal Palaces of Madrid absorbed over a quarter of a century, and a whole army of labourers were twenty years on the Escorial before it was ready for occupation by Philip II. Five hundred men built the royal residence of Miramar in four years. Two architects collaborated in its construction—Mr. Selden Wornum, who laid down the general plan, and SeÑor Goicoa, who was in charge of the building operations and revised the plans as the work proceeded. The materials used, with the exception of some special tiles, which had to be brought from England, are Spanish, the marble and stone having been brought from the provinces of Guipuzcoa, Valladolid, and Burgos; the iron for the different stages from the ‘Altos Hornos’ and ‘Vizcaya’ factories of Bilbao, and the metal work from Eibar.

The real Casa de Campo de Miramar is composed of three departments: the palace, the offices, and the stables and coach-houses. The palace is a three-storied building, in the style of an English country house. On the ground-floor, at the entrance, is a spacious central gallery, which extends nearly the whole length of the palace, dividing it into two parts. On the right are the king’s study, the library, the oratory, the reading-room and the dining-room, which is rectangular, and boasts a magnificent balcony. On the left are the hall, the official reception rooms, and the billiard-room. Between the study and the library is a large drawing-room. On the first floor are the apartments of the king and queen and the old playroom of his Majesty, all communicating with each other by a terrace which overlooks the sea and the garden. From the king’s room a tower is reached, which is surmounted by a flag-staff. The rooms occupied by the royal servants are on the upper floor. A long gallery connects the main building with the house in which are lodged the chief officials of the palace, and the stables, which are fashioned on the most modern English pattern, form a separate building.

Over the principal entrance are three beautifully carved shields: one with the arms of Spain, another with those of the king, and the third with those of the queen. In the construction of the palace, the chief considerations have been comfort and convenience. Every most modern improvements, both scientific and Æsthetic, have been employed to attain this end. The furniture is elegant, and harmonises perfectly with the decoration of the rooms; the tapestries, paintings, porcelains, all the objects of art, in fact, which are found there in great profusion, are in the most exquisite taste; while the park by which Miramar is surrounded is probably the best cultivated domain in the possession of the Crown. The telegraph links up the palace with the whole world; and the telephone connects it with the royal palace and the Government Offices at Madrid. At the extremity of the grounds of the Royal residence, which have been built over the road, and continued to the water’s edge, is the private landing-stage which his Majesty always uses in going to and from the Giralda. On most days during the San Sebastian season, the king is to be seen in the Bay, and he is always one of the most interested spectators of the races during the regatta week.

In a little volume of this kind, which is intended as an album and pictorial souvenir of the palaces of which it treats rather than an illustrated handbook, little attention has been given to the cities in which these royal residences are situated, or the country by which they are surrounded. But a few lines may be added here about San Sebastian, which in most respects is different from other Spanish cities, even from the capitals of the other Basque provinces. San Sebastian is kept spotlessly clean, its municipal management is perfect, and its beggars are conspicuous by their absence. The modernity of the town is due to the firing of the place after the siege of 1813, when the only part that escaped was the bit of old town, situated near the little Port des PÊcheurs, under the shadow of Mount Urgull. The broad, even, regular streets of the new town, which is bisected by the handsome Avenida de la Libertad, are flanked by splendid shops and hotels that would do credit to any European city. The whole place wears an aspect of smiling prosperity, and its life during the holiday season is one continuous round of hearty, innocent gaiety. Cricket, it must be admitted, has not yet been naturalised in Spain, and the golfer must cross the border to Biarritz to indulge in his favourite game, but every other sport that the average Englishman affects can be enjoyed here. The bathing from the beach is the best and safest in the world, and the lover of picturesque scenery has a paradise of varied landscapes and sea pieces within walking distance of the town. There is lawn tennis in the new recreation grounds, and pelota matches, at one or other of the courts, are played daily; while, for those who care for bull fighting, there is a corrida every Sunday afternoon during the season.