Room Mate Migueletes

Hotel description

There’s not much more to say that we haven’t already said about Spain’s Room Mate hotels. It’s hard to go wrong with a low-cost, high-design concept, and the central conceit of inventing a character and personality for each hotel — well, either you love it, or you ignore it, and either way it shows they’re at least aware of the need to create a unique hotel experience. And Migueletes, for all the family resemblance, is something of a departure.

The location is prime for a hotel, in the most picturesque corner of town: this Room Mate stands not in the bustling nightlife district of one of Spain’s capitals, but in the Albayzin, the Moorish heart of medieval Granada, complete with views of the Alhambra. In the 19th century the building lodged a garrison of armed policemen, and it’s these Migueletes, not the fictional hipster brothers, that lend the hotel its name — and in fact it was the Casa Migueletes hotel, in another more recent incarnation.

In this life it’s still steeped in 17th-century history, with timbered ceilings, antique furnishings, and wrought-iron bed frames. What’s updated more than anything is the approach, and the atmosphere — it’s a bit more a boutique hotel now, less a historic preservation society, and the clientele skews younger to match.