Gran Hotel (English: Grand Hotel) is a Spanish drama television series created by Ramón Campos and Gema R. Neira which stars Yon González and Amaia Salamanca. It originally aired on Antena 3 from 2011 to 2013. It debuted on Sky Arts 1 in the UK in 2012.
Produced by Bambú Producciones, the series was filmed at the Palacio de la Magdalena in Santander. It is set in an early 20th century aristocratic hotel during the reign of Alfonso XIII and is centered on the mysteries that involve the owner's family and the hotel servants.
Contents
Plot
The events take place in 1906–1907 in Spain, near a town called Cantaloa. The working-class Julio Olmedo arrives at the luxurious Grand Hotel to visit his sister Cristina, who works there as a maid. Julio is told by a waiter that Cristina was fired for theft a month before, a story Julio does not buy. The unlikely story leads Julio to take a job at the hotel so he can investigate his sister's disappearance. He soon finds an ally in Alicia Alarcón, one of the daughters of the hotel's owner Doña Teresa, who also has suspicions surrounding events occurring at the hotel. Together, Julio and Alicia work to uncover the secrets of the Gran Hotel.
Season 1
Julio Olmedo arrives at the Gran Hotel to look for his sister Cristina. When he learns that she has been fired for theft and that no one has any idea of her whereabouts, he joins the hotel staff as a waiter. He is assisted by Andrés, the son of the head housekeeper. Julio joins the waiters and poses as a guest during a dinner in order to meet a woman called “Lady.” Andrés had told Julio that Cristina was fired because she stole Lady’s jewels, a story Julio does not believe. He brings it up casually while talking to Lady, who seems utterly oblivious to any jewels being stolen. This confuses Julio. At the same time, he meets Alicia Alarcón, who is engaged to Diego Murquia, the hotel manager. Julio and Alicia share a cigarette and have a brief conversation.
The Alarcón family owns the hotel and lives in it. The head of the household is Doña Teresa, the wife of the late Carlos Alarcón. She and Carlos had three children: Sofía, Alicia, and Javier. Sofía is the oldest; she is married to Marqués Alfredo, who aims to become manager of the hotel, and she is pregnant. Tension grows within the family when Sofía learns that Alicia is engaged to Diego, indirectly revealing that Alfredo will no longer be able to become manager. Throughout the first episodes, tension between Alfredo and Sofía increases, leading Alfredo to consider leaving the hotel because he does not feel respected in Cantaloa. However, just as he is leaving, Sofía falls down the stairs. The doctor reveals that her uterus is damaged and she will be unable to have children. He also reports that she lost her baby. Doña Teresa arrives and convinces Sofía that Alfredo will leave her now that she has “lost her value” as a wife. So they come up with a plan: Sofía will continue pretending to be pregnant, and Doña Teresa blackmails the doctor into telling everyone that Sofía only injured her hip while she secretly prepares to find a baby.
Javier Alarcón is the middle child and the most problematic of the siblings. He brings a prostitute to the party Julio attends, much to his mother’s dismay. If there is anything Doña Teresa cares about more than her family, it seems to be her appearance in society. Teresa sends Diego to the bar to tell the owners that they will no longer give Javier any money. Javier is almost thrown out and beaten when Julio comes to his rescue. Julio defeats the men and takes Javier home. He had been following Javier because he believed Javier might be connected to Cristina’s disappearance. Throughout the season, Julio and Javier develop an almost friendly relationship, though they mainly use each other for their own benefit. The prostitute Javier brought is later murdered with a golden knife, prompting Detective Ayala to enter Cantaloa. The knife is traced back to the Gran Hotel, bringing Ayala closer into the story.
Season 2
After Andrés is injured while changing the lightbulbs in the Gran Hotel's dining room, Julio decides to stay at the hotel because he suspects that his friend's accident might be a murder attempt. When Alicia returns from her honeymoon, Julio must regain her trust so that she'll help him in this new investigation. They discover more secrets related to the hotel's late owner, Carlos Alarcón, that could spell the end of the Gran Hotel.
Season 3
This season follows the same investigations as the previous season, but this time Alicia, Julio, and Andrés have the help of Detective Ayala, his assistant Hernando, and Alicia's best friend the lawyer Maite. They also discover new secrets about Diego Murquía involving an identity document and a new enemy who sets off an explosion in the Gran Hotel.
Episodes
Series overview
In their original Spanish broadcast, episodes had a length of roughly 70 minutes each. For the international stream, Netflix recut all episodes to be 45 minutes of length and repackaged the seasons, resulting in 14 episodes in season 1, 28 episodes in season 2 (which includes the first third of the original season 3), and 24 episodes in season 3.
International broadcasts
In France, the series premiered on Téva on 1 June 2012 and on M6 on 4 July 2012. In Russia, it started airing on Domashny on 11 June 2012. The rights to broadcast Grand Hotel were acquired in the United Kingdom by Sky Arts. The series has also been sold to Turkey (Sinema TV Aşk), Lithuania (LNK), Estonia (Sony Entertainment Estonia and Kanal 11) and Venezuela (Televen). In Germany, the rights were acquired by Sony Entertainment Television and on the free-TV-channel Disney Channel. In Poland the series started on 12 November 2013 by AXN White in its dubbed in Polish. In Slovakia, broadcasting by RTVS TV canal, started on 7 January 2014. In Serbia, it started airing on RTS 2 on 10 March 2015. In Bulgaria the series started on 5 June 2015 on Nova Television. In Greece, the series was broadcast in 2014 by Nova.
In the United States, Grand Hotel premiered on VmeTV on 31 October 2013 in its original language.
In Iran, the series was dubbed in Persian language and broadcast by GEM TV.
Ratings
On IMDb the series received a favourable 8.3 rating.
International remakes
There have been several international remakes and adaptations of Gran Hotel:
Italy's Rai 1 premiered an adaptation directed by Luca Ribuoli on 1 September 2015. The Italian version was re-titled in German-speaking countries as Hotel Imperial when it was broadcast by Servus TV on 29 July 2016. The Italian version consists of six episodes of two hours each, whereas the German broadcast has been divided into twelve one hour episodes.
Mexican network Televisa produced an adaptation, El hotel de los secretos (The Hotel of Secrets), that premiered on Las Estrellas channel in January 2016.
Egypt's CBC produced a popular Arabic market adaptation of Grand Hotel as a musalsal in 2016 which received critical acclaim and several awards. Netflix released the Egyptian version, under the title Secret of the Nile and with English, French, German, Italian and Spanish dubbed, on 15 March 2018. It was the first Egyptian series to air on Netflix.
In the United States, ABC premiered an adaptation called Grand Hotel, set in Miami in the present day, on 17 June 2019. It was cancelled in October 2019 after one season.
In France, TF1 produced and premiered an adaptation called Grand Hôtel, set on the French Riviera in the present day, on 3 September 2020. It was cancelled in December 2020 after only one season.
In Greece, Ant1 premiered an adaptation on 25 September 2024, called “Grand Hotel”, set in Athens of 1925. The series aired daily, completing a season of 150 episodes, followed by a second season of 136 episodes, which was the last season.
