El Palace of Santona, sits on a building built in the 16th century, in the last years of the reign of Carlos V, on the corner of Huertas and Príncipe streets, and has a long history behind it. It was later renovated in the 18th century by the architect Pedro de Ribera, to which we owe its magnificent cover and its current exterior image and another great reform in the 19th century by Antonio Ruiz deSalces.

In 1593 it acquired certain relevance, because it served as the residence for some time for the crown prince of Morocco. Muley Xeque during his exile, known as the black prince and that after being baptized he was called Philip of Africa. Cervantes y Lope de Vega They made him a character in some of their works.

In 1731 the property was acquired by the politician and banker Juan Francisco de Goyeneche, Marquis of Ugena, nephew of the well-known Juan de Goyeneche y Gastón, a Navarrese who had accumulated a great fortune as a businessman and banker of Philip V e Elizabeth of Farnese in the first decades of the 18th century.

Goyeneche commissioned Pedro de Ribera to carry out the renovation, which almost completely demolished the previous building. Its exterior appearance shows us the typical traces of the Madrid palaces of the 18th century, with symmetrical compositions with a horizontal perspective, combining brick with stonework and especially in the main doorway carved in granite, which we referred to before and which is a sign of building identity.

In 1874 it was acquired by Don Juan Manuel de Manzanedo, Marquis of Manzanedo and Duke of Santoña, from whom it takes its current name and who commissioned Ruiz de Salces to carry out a thorough renovation and adapt it to the taste of the time, with exotic decoration of influences. oriental and that has been preserved until today.

Source: Madrid Chamber

After the death of the Duke of Santoña and after a long judicial conflict over his inheritance, it became the property of Jose Canalejas, Chairman of the

Government with Alfonso XIII, which sparked a lot of gossip since he was one of the lawyers who participated in the lawsuit that left the widow of the Duke of Santoña in ruin.

Canalejas left here on the day in 1912 that he was murdered in the Puerta del Sol.

Finally in 1933, Casimiro Mahou, as president of the Chamber of Industry, formalized the purchase of the palace as the headquarters of the Chamber that would later merge with the Chamber of Commerce. Today it is still the historic headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce, along with the one located in the Plaza of Independence.

As in other palaces in Madrid, if the exterior is interesting, the interior is even more so.

A abrazo.