The Palacio de la Tinta plans to open as a five-star hotel before the upcoming Holy Week.

The historic Palacio de la Tinta, formerly the headquarters of the Andalusian Railways Confederation, is nearing completion of its renovation to open as a hotel. Áurea Palacio de la Tinta, part of the Hotusa group, plans to open its doors before the upcoming Holy Week. This new five-star hotel accommodation will be the first to open under that brand in the province.

During a visit to the construction site, the general area manager of Eurostars in Málaga, Javier Carrasco, detailed the company's plans, which include opening before the aforementioned holiday, scheduled for the end of March next year. "We are very happy to finally introduce this brand in Málaga because it is not just any brand and is only located in historic buildings."

The Málaga location will be the fifth to open in the capital and the seventh in the province. Additionally, it will be the first to debut with a five-star category. It will have 141 rooms, including seven suites and nine junior suites, a spa, swimming pool, restaurant, terrace with panoramic views, and a meeting room. "The goal is for the client to have an experience within this building and not just come to sleep."

The hotel will feature 141 rooms, a restaurant, spa, swimming pool, terrace with panoramic views, and a meeting room

Regarding the number of jobs created, initially estimated between 70 and 100, he said that they are currently working on it and it will be "all the number of employees necessary to make the client feel comfortable and at home." The selection process for staff - he specified - will begin shortly.

The person in charge of converting the old administrative building into a luxury hotel has been the architect Daniel Isern, who confessed that the main challenge has been trying to recover all the historical elements that over time and their usual use as offices had been destroyed. He recalled that it is a building dating from 1908 and that many of its elements were hidden behind layers of paint or partitions that have been added over the years.

"The most beautiful task has been to face how to remove those elements to leave it clean, how to recover the original color of the facade, how you make everything coherent, the layout looks nice, and the order of the rooms is in accordance with the structure of the original walls of the building," he explained.

Historical Elements

Among the historical elements that have been successfully recovered, the original elevator stands out, which has been left as a decorative element because it was decommissioned and it was impossible to get it running again, the external window bars (which had to be increased in height for safety) or the stained glass windows in the staircases. "When you start scraping, the original courtyards, the original elevator, and all these elements that we have been saving come out, adding a bit of value and putting them in harmony with the city."

The interior design has been handled by Jaime Beriestain's studio, which has endeavored to ensure the interior matches the prestige of the exterior. In the words of the architect, "he has sought very noble materials, like endless marbles or endless moldings that place the building in the era it was constructed. There is a whole exercise of respecting the past and identifying with the building's splendor that is very beautiful." The room design was inspired by Picasso's atelier.

The Áurea Palacio de la Tinta hotel will have its own restaurant, managed by the group itself, located on the top floor of the building, which can be accessed directly from the entrance. As they have advanced, it will pay tribute to seasonal Andalusian products but reinterpreted with a contemporary touch.

The old Palacio de la Tinta was designed by engineer Julio Aublin Cala in an eclectic style with a marked French flavor. Opened in 1908 to house the central offices of the Andalusian Railways Confederation, over the years it has also served as the headquarters for various services of the provincial delegation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Sustainable Development in Málaga or the Southern Hydrographic Confederation, its last use. The building has been closed since 2019, when the Andalusian Regional Government auctioned it and Hotusa paid 21 million euros for it.

The Hotusa group currently has six hotels in the province, four of them located in the capital. In Málaga capital, they operate Exe Málaga Museos, Eurostars Astoria, Tandem Soho Suites, and Eurostars Málaga. In the province, they have Eurostars Oasis Marbella and Exe Estepona.