Welcome and Hotel History

Dear guest:

In the name of the staff and mine, we would like to welcome you.

We are grateful to you for having chosen us as your host during your stay in Cudillero´s borough.

We thank you for your understanding and patience for the consequences, in our service, that the application of the hygienic-sanitary measures that we have to implement due to the Covid-19 may entail. Your health is the most important thing for us.

We wish you feel at home when you come into the doors of this building built in 1890.

We invite you to enjoy of the gastronomy in our restaurant.

It is our dearest wish that your stay among us were the greatest and pleasant as possible.

Faithfully,

Patricia Pérez

Manager

HISTORY OF A HOUSE AND OF THOSE WHO LIVED IN IT: FROM TAILOR´S TO HOTEL

The Hotel Old Tailor´s House is the result of the rehabilitation of the old tailor´s house. The original building dates back to 1890.

Afterwards, in the 50s and 70s some new parts were added to provide it with a warehouse, bathrooms, which it still did not have, a larger tailor´s workshop, together with garages  and a henhouse.

The house, originally built by a well- off family, was also the priest´s house, the banacks of the Civil Guard and prison during the Spanish Civil War. In 1945 our grandparents moved to Soto de Luiña with their two  children and bought the house in order to set up a small tailor´s shop. Owing to the large dimensions there were some vacated/empty rooms which in the 50s began to be rented, at first to the families of the Civil Guards who were appointed to the barracks in the village (which had, and still has, only three blocks) and then to all those who went through Soto de Luiña and looked for a room to spend the night. In the 60s, with the tourist boom, there were many well-off familias who stayed for long summer holidays of a month or a month and a half, which today are almost unthinkable.

The tailor´s business went on growing and besides themaking of civil suits, they also started making several kinds of uniform:Military, Civil Guard, National Police, local Police, bands, guards, formal uniforms etc. The premises on the ground floor became too small and a tailor´s workhouse had to be added and an extensión providing it with modern machinery to facilitate the tailor´s work and delivery times. Two cutters, a work-shop head and fifteen people counting tailor´s and aprendices made up the little family business in which our grand-parents who were aheady retired put all their hopes and dreams.

At that time their suits were to be seen in Asturias, Galicia and the North of Castile and León. We, the small ones, ran about and helped in what we could, although we considered it as a game and not the basis for learning the business. And with all that work, our grandfather had no better idea than buying a cow, because the milk in brick was an insult to him. To that cow was added another  and another, milked and a party was held each time a calf was born. But when the summer cama and with it the time for making hay, it was exhausting.

In those same days, the adjacent building was made up of three stories, the two superior ones were dedicated to housing, called the new tailor´s house. On the ground floor was the the first guesthouse (with Tourist Licence).  In those years the N-632 was the only road between Avilés and Luarca: Guesthouse Paulino is still working today. We learnt early how to make beds, clean bathrooms, welcome and accommódate guests and, of course to play with the children who visited.

At the end of the 70s the tailor´s business began to declive due to the take-off of big companies like Galerías Preciados, Cortefiel or El Corte Inglés. Made-to-measure clothes were no longer chosen because those readymade had shorter delivery time and were cheaper. It was utopic to think about new uniform orders since it was mathematically impossible to compete against the lower prices of those big companies.

Besides, everything seemed to conspire: the two restaurants in the village closed down and became only bars so the people staying in our guesthouse complained at having no place to have breakfast, lunch or dinner and that brought our parents to search for a solution both for their clients and for their own professional future.

Their idea was to set up their own restaurant and in 1983 “Los Quintos Restaurant” (the name of the plot) was oponed, located in a new building with a bar-cafeteria, restaurant, terrace, parking and play area.

From that moment orwards, all of the family members worked on the business and we started a new life the in the World of restauration, a new one for us! They were hard times because of our lack of knowledge, but also flourishing and fruitful ones.

We, the grandchildren, are no longer children and we had no choice but to reconcile work and studies. But at the end of these and because of the lack of professional opportunities, we found it necessary to join the family business and work together.

At the same time,  with our parents nearing retirement,  there was a need to  create a future and we began to considered that our destiny was in the hotel business.

In 1998, after seeing how the touristic demand in the area diminished, due to the closedown of the campsite at San Pedro Beach and the new route of the national road outside the village, we took into account the necessity of adding an extensión to the restaurant but the urbanistic law rejected this.

We didn´t give up on our wish and thanks to a rural development plan we got a subvention to reform the tailor´s shop and our grandparent´s old house. The result is what today you can see: a small rural hotel which we wanted to imbibe with the familiar warmth of the materials: needles, threads and hard work. The name was quite easy, our grandfather said “The Old House” and in the village it was called “The Tailor´s house” so “Old Tailor´s House” seemed to be a name easy to be identified.

The original structure of rooms and staircases was kept in the rebuild, whilst the stone walls were reinforced. Rustic stoneware and iroko and jatoba wood were used for the floors, windows and staircase. Almost all the furniture in the old house was restored and some of the pieces were used in a new way, so that the doors of wardrobes became mirrors, the feet of beds were transformed into chests, the feet of some pieces of furniture into decorations, the wardrobes into bookcases, the table of the dining-room into reception, the fashion sketches and magazines are now pictures and so

on with everything we could recover the hotel was opened on 15-07-1999  and from that.

From that moment orwards, we have always tried to ensure that  all our guests felt at home, enjoying their stay here surrounded by a warmth and cosy atmosphere.

We are at your entire disposal so that both your expectations and ours are fulfilled.

Finally, in 2006, the last renovation was completed to provide the hotel with a restaurant service, reading room, multipurpose room (meeting room) and rooms with lounge.


But this is a living project. We are continuously renovating rooms to improve the facilities and offer our guests new services.


«Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.»