Palacio de Luces: A Historic Manor House in Asturias
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Spanish
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page14 sections
History
Palacio de Luces is a manor house in Luces, Spain, within the parish of Lastres and the municipality of Colunga in Asturias. Juan Victorero “the Elder” built it in 1580, creating a rural noble residence that became the principal and most prestigious building of a larger agricultural estate. The property supported farming, livestock raising, timber production, and cider making, and remained closely associated with the Victorero family for centuries.
Foundation and the Victorero estate
Juan Victorero built the palace after separating from his family, which already held the Palacio de Vallados in Lastres. Construction continued for eight years. His 1624 testament established the Victorero mayorazgo at Luces. A mayorazgo was an entail that kept an estate and its associated rights within a designated line of inheritance, preventing its ordinary division or sale. The Luces entail included the palace, related buildings, and agricultural land.
The Victorero connection with Luces extended beyond the residence itself. Family landholdings and burials at the former parish church of Santa María de Sádaba point to an ancestral Victorero seat in the area. The estate also contained facilities connected with agricultural production, including buildings for making and storing cider. An inscription dated 1829 refers to a cider storehouse financed by Don Bernardo José Victorero y Udías.
Inheritance and changing ownership
The mayorazgo remained with one branch of the Victorero family until the Spanish law of 1841 ended entails and allowed the Luces property to pass to another family branch. Its recorded holders included Juan Victorero “the Elder,” Alonso Victorero Valdivares, Alonso Victorero Peón, María Manuela Victorero Cantillo, Gertrudis Bárbara Victorero Cantillo, Marcelino Victorero Suárez de Granda, and José María Victorero Vázquez de Prada, known as “the Little Gentleman.”
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos passed through the palace in 1790 while travelling as a pilgrim toward Santiago de Compostela along the oldest known route of the Camino de Santiago, the network of pilgrimage roads leading to the shrine of Saint James. A possible family connection also links the house with Jovellanos: Alonso Cándido Victorero, son of Alonso Victorero de Toro, married Juana García Jovellanos, who was related to him.
José María Victorero Vázquez de Prada left the palace in 1920. Debts then led to a public auction of the house and its estate, which covered approximately 36 hectares. The property was bought by Faustino Álvarez del Manzano, a notary from Madrid. Adolfo Venta acquired it in 1930, when the estate had been reduced to about 20 hectares. In 1948, the siblings José María and Leonor Martínez became owners and improved the building, its perimeter enclosures, and its chapel. They also held a neighbourhood festival at the palace each 15 August for the Virgin of Velilla.
Isidro Alonso, known as “Doro,” acquired the property in 1964. Emilio Boto followed in 1974, purchasing the palace and most of the remaining estate. He expanded the agricultural holdings, built a new livestock structure, strengthened the farming operation, and acquired the nearby Techa farmstead from the Díaz Ordóñez family. Several later owners belonged to the social group known as Indianos, Spanish emigrants who returned from the Americas, often with wealth accumulated overseas. A palm tree in the garden recalls the owners’ years in the Americas, although the palace itself predates the houses normally associated with returning emigrants.
Modern transformation
In 2002, the Boto family sold the palace, nearby land, and associated buildings to the Sociedad del Hotel Palacio de Luces, while retaining the Techa farmstead. After a period of inactivity, the company converted and enlarged the complex as a five-star hotel. The former agricultural land was leased for beef cattle. In 2018, the palace and its associated facilities were sold to the hotel group Globhi, identified as the current owner.
The building’s physical history comprises at least four main phases. The first was the original sixteenth-century construction. Eighteenth-century alterations introduced Malta and Franciscan heraldic elements and created new openings in the façades. A mid-twentieth-century rebuilding altered most of the north façade and the perimeter enclosure. The 2005 conversion reorganized the complex for hotel use and added new service volumes.
Remains
Setting and main house
Palacio de Luces stands on the plateau of Cabo de Lastres, about 100 metres above sea level and approximately 2 kilometres from the Cantabrian Sea and Lastres. It is close to the Lastres lighthouse, with views toward the sea and the Sueve range. The main house is a large rectangular rural manor of rubble masonry and ashlar stone. It has two storeys, an attic, numerous doors, windows, and balconies, and a four-sided roof covered with clay tiles.
Carefully cut interlocking ashlar blocks project beyond the façade line at all four corners. The southwest and northwest corners also retain narrow ashlar firebreaks, one of which is now largely hidden by a climbing plant. An ashlar string course runs around the building below the roof structure and supports the eaves. The original walls use irregular rubble masonry, mortar-filled openings, and a surface finish resembling sgraffito, a decorative treatment that emphasizes selected stones. Most of this early fabric survives in the external walls of the first floor.
Principal façades
East façade
The east façade is the principal front of the palace. Its three doors include two older lowered arches set on plain imposts. They formerly opened into a vestibule connected with the small covered central courtyard and its staircase. Above one doorway are two Victorero coats of arms and a shield bearing the Maltese cross within a Franciscan cord. The heraldic element was added by Alonso José Victorero García Jovellanos, a knight of the Royal and Military Order of Charles III and of the Order of Malta. The Order of Malta was a Catholic religious and military order identified by the Maltese cross, while the Franciscan cord is a knotted emblem associated with the Franciscan tradition.
A later and wider arch on the same façade serves as a window for the great hall, with three matching upper windows above it. The masonry indicates that these openings were centred on an earlier principal façade that was smaller than the present front. Eighteenth-century work introduced larger, better-cut ashlar blocks, especially on the first floor and on parts of the east and north façades.
South façade
The south façade preserves the clearest elements of the oldest building. Its window openings are deliberately asymmetrical. Smaller and irregularly arranged openings toward the west served functional or less important rooms, while larger and more carefully finished openings toward the east belonged to more representative spaces. A small circular shield bearing a Maltese cross appears below an upper window. In the central section, large windows are flanked above by two balconies with wooden railings.
North and west façades
Most of the north façade dates from the mid-twentieth century. Its regular design includes a two-flight external staircase, a central lower door opening into the great ground-floor hall, and two large lower windows. An upper doorway beneath a small roof and parapet is flanked by three large windows on each side. The upper rooms are identified as the principal bedrooms and now form the hotel’s main suites, facing toward the Cantabrian Sea. The west façade is largely concealed by ancillary hotel buildings, although its ground-floor door connects the reception area with the rest of the complex.
Interior arrangement and agricultural evidence
Despite repeated interventions over roughly four and a half centuries, the interior retains much of the volume and spatial arrangement associated with houses of its period. The entrance hall occupies what was formerly the zaguán, an entrance vestibule or passage linking the exterior with the interior rooms, and rises into a covered internal courtyard. The lower floor historically held the kitchens, offices, and other service rooms, while the upper storey was arranged around the courtyard. The lower level now accommodates administrative functions, and the upper rooms serve as hotel bedrooms.
A corridor along the south side of the lower floor formerly connected rooms opening toward the south façade and now also links newer hotel spaces. Opposite the entrance, the main staircase leads to the upper storey. A large room extending along the façade contains two large windows and a north-facing door. Its fireplace is crowned by a massive stone lintel taken from a cider press. A carved inscription on the stone states that a cider-making storehouse was financed by Don Bernardo José Victorero y Udías in 1829. The precise position of that storehouse has not been identified.
Perimeter enclosure and chapel
Perimeter wall
The estate retains a perimeter wall shaped like a battlemented fortification, though it was ornamental rather than defensive. A lowered stone arch on the east side gives direct access to the main palace. Surviving sections of the enclosure pass through parts of the present hall and have been incorporated into the building and presented as decorative elements. The mid-twentieth-century works reconstructed the enclosure and restored lost battlements.
Estate chapel
A small chapel stands immediately northeast of the palace. This rural church has an anteportico, a wall-like bell gable known as an espadaña, and an exterior pulpit. The pulpit is an unusual feature attributed to the chapel’s limited size. Paintings from its former painted altarpiece were transferred to the Chapel of San Roque in Lastres.
The 2005 hotel conversion reorganized the interior, demolished the agricultural outbuildings apart from the retained wall, and added new volumes for hotel services. The surviving palace, enclosure, chapel, and portions of the historic interior therefore preserve elements from the estate’s domestic, agricultural, and religious functions alongside the later hotel adaptation.
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