HALLOWEN A DAY OF SCREAMS

Halloween: the curse of nine buildings in Spain and the true stories behind their ghosts

The employees of the Reina Sofía night shift live in fear, in the Cervantes Vélez house they already live with the man without a face and nobody wants to face the ghost travelers of the Rocafort platform in Barcelona

Few things produce such mixed feelings as horror stories. This gratifying injection of adrenaline that causes us to have a hard time has a scientific explanation, unlike many of the phenomena that surround so many buildings in which crimes, unsolved deaths or have been the den of the worst of the condition have occurred. human.

There are hundreds of legends that circulate around cursed places in Spain. We selected a few that will serve as conversation starters this Halloween night.

• Raimunda, the girl who cries in the Linares palace (Madrid)

From happiness to horror, according to legend, they spent only a few years in this French-inspired neo-baroque palace, right in the Plaza de Cibeles in Madrid. Built by José Murga y Reolid, the son of a rich Basque family that had made a fortune in Cuba, and his wife, Raimunda de Osorio y Ortega, from a good family but an unknown father, the palace had all kinds of luxuries: stables, a house of dolls in the garden and an imposing Carrara marble staircase designed by Manuel Aníbal Álvarez.

Shortly after moving to their new home, although the works had not finished yet, the couple discovered the family secret kept for so many years: the identity of the young woman's father who was none other than Murga himself. This information could not come to light, as it endangered her high status in Spanish society The girl had to disappear. The versions about her death are disparate: some sources say that she was sandwiched somewhere in the palace; others, that they buried her in the garden after drowning her. All this would explain, according to this fanciful story, why today there are those who hear laments inside the palace from then until today.

• The ghost that wanders on the roof of the house of the Seven Chimneys (Madrid)

The Plaza del Rey, a classic on the vermouth route in the capital, also hides a terrifying chapter. In one of its streets is the former residence of the Marquis de Esquilache, a building with a stately façade that was designed centuries before by the architect Antonio Sillero for the scholar Pedro de Ledesma. It is known as the house of the Seven Chimneys because of the ducts that protrude on the outside of its facade and that, popularly, were associated with the seven deadly sins.

The most chilling legend that houses one of the few examples of civil architecture from the 16th century left standing in Madrid comes alive when night falls. The origin of the story goes back to the bedroom of Felipe II. According to the accounts of the time, the king had an intense love affair with a woman named Elena Méndez during her marriage to Ana de Austria, who wanted to nip it in the bud by marrying her husband's mistress to Captain Zapata. In addition, to avoid temptations, the monarch had to establish the marital residence of the new couple far from the palace, in this historic house in the Chueca neighborhood.

• These are some of the most well-known and chilling stories in Spain, adding little by little the dark mystery of each legend or historical story.