Palace of the Senate

The Palace of the Senate is the seat of the Senate of Spain, the upper chamber of the Cortes Generales, the national parliament of Spain. It is located in the Spanish Navy Square in the central district of Madrid. The building has served as the primary home for the upper house of the Spanish legislature since 1835, with interruptions during periods of dictatorship, and continues to function as the meeting place for the modern Senate.

The structure was originally built in the 16th century as a school and convent for the Augustinian order, known as the Incarnation School or the Doña María de Aragón School. Sources attribute the design to either Francisco de Montalbán or Francisco de Mora. The institution was one of the most prominent in the capital, and its church housed several El Greco masterpieces that were later moved to the Prado Museum. Following the ecclesiastical confiscations of the early 19th century, the building was repurposed for parliamentary use. It briefly hosted the Cortes of Cádiz in 1814, and again between 1820 and 1823 during the Trienio Liberal, when architect Isidro González Velázquez transformed the church into an assembly hall. With the approval of the Royal Statute of 1834, a bicameral parliament was established, and the Chamber of Peers moved into the building in 1835 after initially meeting provisionally at the Casón del Buen Retiro. The palace served the upper house until 1923, when the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera dissolved the Cortes. During the Second Spanish Republic, the unicameral parliament met elsewhere, and during the Franco dictatorship, the building housed the National Council of the Movement. With the return of democracy in 1977, the Senate was restored to its historic home, participating in the drafting of the 1978 Constitution.

The palace contains a large library and preserves a notable collection of 19th century art, with a particular strength in historicist painting. The collection includes a significant body of work by the painter Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz.

Among the most significant works in the collection is La rendición de Granada (1882) by Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Other notable 19th century historicist paintings include Últimos momentos de Fernando IV el Emplazado by José Casado del Alisal, La Bataille de Lépante by Juan Luna, and Episodio de la guerra de África de 1860, painted in 1889 by César Álvarez Dumont.

The building has undergone significant architectural modifications since its 16th century origins. Between 1844 and 1850, architects Aníbal Álvarez Bouquel and Emilio Rodríguez Ayuso remodeled the interior and added a Herrerian neoclassical facade to the complex. To accommodate modern parliamentary needs, an annex with a semicircular facade facing Bailén Street was constructed between 1987 and 1991 based on designs by Salvador Gayarre Ruiz de Galarreta.

The Palace of the Senate is situated in the Palace neighborhood of the Centro district in Madrid, immediately northeast of the Royal Palace. It remains the active home of the Senate of Spain, sharing legislative duties with the Congress of Deputies as defined by the current constitution. The institution maintains a public website at http://www.senado.es/web/index.html.