Mediterranean winter resorts : a complete and practical handbook to the principal health and pleasure resorts on the shores of the Mediterranean, with special articles on the principal invalid stations by resident English physicians / by Eustace A. Reynolds-Ball.
- Reynolds-Ball, Eustace A. (Eustace Alfred), 1858-1928
- Date:
- 1904
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Mediterranean winter resorts : a complete and practical handbook to the principal health and pleasure resorts on the shores of the Mediterranean, with special articles on the principal invalid stations by resident English physicians / by Eustace A. Reynolds-Ball. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
312/720 (page 282)
![town, this want of suitable accommodation for invalids has ])rL-- vented Malaga from being much frequented as a health resort pure and simple, though as a winter residence for the more- robust class of invalids it is occasionally recommended by medical men. Furnished villas are very scarce, but there are a few in the suburbs, which can be rented for the season. Apply to Secretary, Sociedad Propagandista du Clima de Malaga, who will be glad to furnish any information to those desiring it about Malaga or its neighbourhood. Spain has deservedly a bad reputation for hotels, compared with other countries of Western Europe. Except in Madrid, Barcelona, and one or two other places, there are no really first- class hotels in the country, though at Seville, Granada, Malaga, and other tourist centres in the south of Spain, very fair, but not first-class, accommodation is to be obtained. To show how far behind the times Spanish hotel proprietors are, it may be men- tioned that there are hardly any passenger lifts—a fair test of the modernity of an hotel—in the peninsula. The worst points of the average hotel are the defective sanitation—the lavatory arrangements being unpleasantly primitive—inefficient service, scanty bedroom accommodation, want of comfort in the barely furnished reception-rooms, and the absence of fireplaces or any wanning appliance in the form of calorifcres. We must not, however, forget the good features of Spanish hotels. The table is plentiful and the cooking good, though the service and table appointments lack refinement. Then the American pension system is universal, and extras do not figure largely in the bill—a distinct advantage in a country where French or English is rarely understood. It must be admitted, too, that the salons and bedrooms are large and airy, and the large covered-in patio—a feature of most hotels—makes an admirable lounge for smoking. It is, perhaps, when he is leaving the hotel that the guest has one of the greatest draw - backs of Spanish hotel Hfe unpleasantly brought home to him. The giving of gratuities has not lieen reduced to a system, as in other countries of Western Europe. Tipping in a Spanisli hotel is more in the nature of compulsory backsheesh, and here in the most western countiy of Continental Euro]3e the VVesi shakes hands with the Orient. All the employes gather like](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24757986_0312.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
