Gela Urdina

An old legend tells of a castaway thrust by the waves onto the beach of Zarautz in 1572. The stranger was taken in by the owners of the Narros Palace, who hosted him in the Blue Room for recovery. The legend says the castaway was a fugitive Huguenot, who, after the massacre carried out by the Catholics on St. Bartholomew's night in Paris, tried to escape from France. He left La Rochelle, heading to England on a galleon, but a strong storm in the Bay of Biscay thwarted his journey. The castaway worsened, and in his feverish delirium, he cursed and renounced the Catholic faith. He died in the Blue Room, without receiving the holy sacraments. It was August 23, the day of St. Bartholomew. The gossipy tongues relay that we can still hear his screams in the Palace and if we pay attention, the pictures speak, trying to tell us what happened. It was Luis Coloma, the Jesuit writer, who recovered this legend in 1912. In a tale, he narrates his own experience in the Blue Room of the Narros Palace. He says it was a mysterious night in which he felt a ghostly presence accompanied by screams that instilled real fear in him. In 2018, in remembrance of the legend of the Blue Room, we decided to set up a hotel. However, the mysteries of the Blue Room endure. Are you ready to discover who, how, and why the castaway was murdered?