High in the Pyrenees, a vast, abandoned station reopens as a hotel

Walk north out of Canfranc Estación, 1,200m up in the Spanish Pyrenees, following the right bank of the river Aragón, and you find yourself on a shaded path called the Paseo de los Melancólicos (melancholics’ promenade). There are two theories as to how it got its name.

One is that it was the constitutional prescribed to the consumptives who came to the village, a place of fewer than 600 people discounting the skiers and hikers who come in the holiday seasons, in the hope that the mountain air might clear their lungs and brighten their mood.

The other is that it was named for the half-million who fled Franco’s Spain for France, a little over 7km north. Canfranc had been one of only three places the railway crossed the border. In 1936 Franco had closed the border and ordered the walling up of the train tunnel (now used as an underground laboratory for research into dark matter, which requires the sort of “cosmic silence” found deep within mountains). With petrol scarce and no more trains, the only way out was on foot.

These days one walks these paths for pleasure. At this time of year, the forest floor is carpeted not just in moss and lichens, but violets, cowslips, aquilegias, hellebores and meadow saxifrage. But the principal reason to come to Canfranc is to marvel at its monumental former international railway station, a Modernista palace of concrete and steel that stretches 241m north-south along a valley still littered with the vestiges of warehousing and silos built to house the goods and grain that were traded along this route.

Opened in July 1928 with a ceremony attended by both King Alfonso XIII of Spain and President Gaston Doumergue of France, the railway not only promised a route from Paris, via Zaragoza and Madrid, to Lisbon, and thence to the Americas, but a new era of collaboration between the two countries. Their respective rolling stock ran on lines of different gauges, however, so passengers and cargo had to change trains, hence the need for a building big enough to house each nation’s customs and immigration halls, as well as a hotel, restaurant, hospital, library, bank and, upstairs, accommodation for its senior officials.

In 1940, after the end of the civil war, Franco reopened the tunnel and border, after which Canfranc became a hotbed of spies, sometimes referred to as the “Casablanca of the Pyrenees”. It provided a route out of occupied France through which thousands escaped to the US, and more than 80 tonnes of looted gold and French grain were traded with Spain and Portugal for tungsten necessary for the German war effort. By the end of 1942, by which time the whole of France was under Nazi occupation, the station was controlled by the Gestapo.

After the war the route was frequently threatened by underfunding and low traffic volumes, then in 1970, a freight train on the French side derailed, struck and destroyed a bridge and the international line was closed for good. Over the next half century, the station building was left to decay, living up to its nickname, the “Titanic of the mountains” — until the site was acquired by the regional government in 2013 and restoration plans announced in 2017. In February, under the management of the Spanish hospitality group Barceló, it finally opened its doors as a 104-room hotel — beautifully designed, full of history and, with rooms from €149 per night, a bargain.

It is still theoretically possible to get there by rail: there are three slow but scenic daily services from Zaragoza (which has a small airport served from the UK by Ryanair), 170km away. Most guests, however, arrive by car.

One enters the hotel via what was the central booking hall, an imposing triple-height space lit by clerestory windows through which the peaks of the surrounding snow-capped mountains are visible on both sides. The brass wall lamps and some of the original floor tiles are still in situ, as is a grand marble staircase that descends to the tunnel that runs under the tracks. Above the reception desk a shield emblazoned RF, for Republique Française, indicates the north, or French Wing, which once accommodated a consulate. Opposite, the Spanish Wing bears the arms of Alfonso XIII.

But otherwise, its new interiors, by the Barcelona practice Ilmio, avoid anything obviously reminiscent of railcars, even if the engaging staff are dressed as train employees, in smart green livery, complete with whistles and kepis. 

My room, a one-up-from-entry-level “superior deluxe” on the second floor, was spacious and faultlessly comfortable, with a herringbone parquet floor, well-placed lighting and a big sofa to read on. The only decoration was a series of photographs of the station in its heyday, framed in one of the 365 original windows. And the only oddity was the toilet, the bowl of which exuded an unearthly blue light. Junior suites have identical footprints and decor but are partitioned to create a sitting area with an extra TV.

There are also four signature suites, named after the founder and others who played a part in the extraordinary history of this place, figures such as Albert Le Lay, the “Spanish Schindler”, the station’s customs chief and one of a network of spies run from the British consulate in San Sebastián. He not only effected the evacuation of countless Jews through Canfranc, but worked with the likes of Josephine Baker, the Jazz Age entertainer and spy-heroine of the French Resistance. She passed through here in November 1940, couriering details of Germany’s planned invasion of Gibraltar, along with lists of Luftwaffe air bases across France and counter-intelligence agents known to be at large in Britain and Ireland, all written in invisible ink on her sheet music. Her destination was the British Embassy in Lisbon and the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service.

As Baker’s biographer Damien Lewis notes, the French, German and Spanish customs agents were too daunted by her abundance of luggage to bother opening it and too dazzled by her celebrity to search her. “Her stardom was her cloak,” he writes in last year’s bestseller The Flame of Resistance, quoting her as saying: “Who would dare search Josephine Baker to the skin?” The collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim, who had made a point of not wanting to travel with “so many suitcases”, was less fortunate, when she changed trains here eight months later. “At the frontier I was searched from head to foot, naked,” she recalled in her autobiography Out of This Century.

There is excellent walking through landscapes that have been shaped by the railway

Once cleared to continue her journey, “It was wonderful to be free of the Gestapo and to enjoy life again,” Guggenheim wrote, praising the “marvellous meals” she ate in Spain. And eating remains another pleasure here, not least because the hotel’s restaurants are overseen by Eduardo Salanova and Ana Acín, whose Huesca institution, Espacio N, has a Michelin star.

Salanova grew up in Canfranc, hence the emphasis on traditional Aragonese cooking in the main restaurant, dishes such as cachopo (breaded lamb, stuffed with cheese and fried) and torrija (essentially French toast, fried in butter and caramelised in muscovado sugar), although when it comes to dessert — the great glory of this menu — go for the chilled aerated sheep’s milk yoghurt, with passion fruit ice cream and gel, a perfect combination of sour and sweet, soft and solid.

This is no place for calorie counting (or vegans). But there are lighter options and international ones: a poke bowl with cured local trout, a single supersized cannelloni, stuffed with local veal, mushrooms and hazelnuts, dressed in a Perigord sauce, and the inevitable burger.

If the cooking in the main restaurant is hearty and inexpensive, with starters from €9.50 and mains from €17, the cuisine in the gastronomic restaurant, which opens fully in May, promises to be sensational.

Occupying a pair of train carriages now parked on the rails that run along the back of the building, a multi-course dinner here will set you back at least €120 a head before you think of wine. But on the basis of the seven exquisitely presented courses I tried at a preview dinner for staff, it will surely become a destination in itself.

The ingredients Salanova uses are luxurious and where possible from the region or its neighbours: sturgeon and caviar from El Grado, guineafowl from Monegros, lamb from Huesca, percebes (goose barnacles) from Galicia. But it’s what he does with more ordinary produce that amazes. The standout dishes for me were a wobbling set custard of liquefied caramelised onions in a pool of truffly Périgueux sauce, and an emulsion of borage, clams and cockles.

There are now plans to reopen the international railway — rebuilding the track on the French side and converting the Spanish side to standard gauge so trains can run through — although completion will be many years away. For the moment, most of the hotel’s guests, almost all of them Spanish or French, seem to have been drawn by its history, for the story of Canfranc has inspired a lot of books in Spain (spy and romantic fiction as well as history), many of which line the shelves of the Library bar and Café Art Deco.

But there is excellent walking from the hotel, too, through landscapes that have also been shaped by the railway. The sides of the valley would still be grass, were it not for the seven million Scots, Corsican and hooked pines, fir, larch, beech and silver birch planted a century ago to prevent landslides, flash floods and avalanches. Canfranc’s strategic position as a border post remains evident as well, in the 18th-century Coll de Ladrones fort and more recent bunkers that serve as waymarkers.

But if history is an incentive to travel, it can also weigh on a hotel, and disquieting backstories don’t always make for a happy atmosphere. Here, though, I couldn’t have been happier. Canfranc still feels like a place of escape, but these days it’s from the cares of the world.

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