Palacio de Linares

The Palacio de Linares faces the Cibeles fountain at one of Madrid’s grandest crossroads. It was built for José de Murga y Reolid, one of the richest men in late 19th-century Spain, and his wife Raimunda de Osorio y Ortega, the first Marquis and Marchioness of Linares, who bought the site from the city in 1872. Designed largely by the Flemish architect Adolf Ombrecht and executed by the municipal architect Carlos Colubí from 1877, it boasts a Carrara marble staircase, Gobelins tapestries, a Chinese salon, Pompeian-style painted galleries and a doll’s house pavilion in the garden. The couple, married since 1858, moved in in 1884. Raimunda died in October 1901 and José in April 1902; his will stated that they had no children and left the palace to their goddaughter, Raimunda Avecilla.

After them, the house was largely shut up for most of a century. It passed through several owners, was damaged during the Civil War and came close to demolition before being declared a historic monument in 1976. Its dusty salons served as a set for Luis García Berlanga’s 1981 film Patrimonio nacional. In 1992, after a long restoration, it reopened as the Casa de América, a cultural centre for Spain and the Americas, and appeared that year on the 10,000-peseta banknote.

The long abandonment fed one of Madrid’s favourite ghost stories. According to rumour, José fell in love with Raimunda, supposedly the daughter of a Lavapiés cigar-factory worker, and his father Mateo Murga sent him away to London – because, as a letter found after Mateo’s death revealed, Raimunda was his own illegitimate daughter. The young couple, the tale continues, obtained a papal dispensation from Pius IX allowing them to live together chastely, but they had a child anyway, a girl called Raimundita, whom they killed and hid within the palace walls to avoid scandal. Her voice is said to haunt the empty rooms, singing nursery songs and calling for her parents.

None of this has been documented. José’s parents had both died in 1857, a year before the wedding, and Raimunda’s mother, Benita Ortega, is on record but her father is listed as unknown – a gap that let the rumour take root. In 1990 the writer Torcuato Luca de Tena challenged many of the stories in an article for the newspaper ABC, and no birth, death or burial of a child has ever been found. The historian Carmen Maceiras Rey reopened the question of Raimunda’s parentage in El secreto de Raimunda, la marquesa de Linares (Sílex, 2009), tracing her and her mother, Benita, an unmarried working woman, through Madrid records – but the murdered child remains a legend. Casa de América staff are used to visitors asking about the ghost, and the palace still features in guides to haunted Madrid.

The legend speaks of a little girl’s voice singing or calling “Mamá”, footsteps and sobbing in empty rooms, and figures of a couple in 19th-century dress. Many of the claims date from the years when the palace stood locked and empty, when ghost hunters and mystery writers took an interest in it.

Stories focus on the upper floors, the private apartments of the marquises and the basements and blocked tunnels beneath the building; some versions say the child is walled up in the cellars.

The legend of Raimundita has inspired novels, mystery-magazine features and radio programmes, and the palace features on Madrid ghost walks. As the Casa de América, it hosts exhibitions, concerts and debates, and its restaurant and gardens are open to the public.