Series / Gran Hotel

"Knowing the truth will change their lives." ^note From left to right/top down: Alicia, Julio, Ángela, Andrés, Belén, Ayala, Diego, and Doña Teresa

Gran Hotel is a Spanish TV series (produced and aired by Antena 3) that takes place in beginning-of-the-century northern Spain, in the fictitious Gran Hotel. It stars Yon González and Amaia Salamanca, among others, and is filmed in several points in Santander, with the Palacio de la Magdalena standing as the eponymous Gran Hotel.

The series has been well received by both critics and the public, reaching an 18.5% of share during its first season, as well as being broadcast in France, the United Kingdom and Russia. The series concluded after three seasons.

The story begins in 1905, with the mysterious disappearance and presumed death of Cristina Olmedo (Paula Prendes), a maid at the Gran Hotel. Six months later, her brother Julio (Yon Gonzalez) arrives to investigate said disappearance and gets a job at the hotel, becoming friends with Andrés (Llorenç Gonzalez), the son of staff manager Ángela (Concha Velasco), as well as with Alicia (Amaia Salamanca), the daughter of the Gran Hotel's owners, the Alarcón family. Julio and Alicia fall in love, living a passionate romance that is impossible due to their class differences, while they investigate the web of death, lies and secrets kept within the Gran Hotel's walls.

A very loose American adaptation titled Grand Hotel, with Eva Longoria as executive producer, premiered on ABC during the 2018—19 midseason.

This series has examples of the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: In the majority of the serial, Teresa de Alarcón only cared about the wealthiest status of her family, while treating her children in many miserable ways. For example, she gave her youngest daughter to a man who helped her kill her husband, as part of a deal of making his death non-suspicious and more "natural".

• After-Action Patch-Up: Julio is treated under this a few times (usually helped by Alicia), after getting involved in many fights.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Julio used to be a thief before he started working in the Gran Hotel, and he is usually fighting in the tavern for money, information, or just because he wants to vent his emotions. That also includes his impulsive nosey habits into the mysteries of the hotel. No wonder why Alicia or Isabel (and presumably Maite) fall for him.
• Alliterative Name: Alicia Alarcón and her half-brothers, Ángel and Andrés.
• All Take and No Give: Diego insists on Alicia to trust him, but he gives her no trust in return. No one of them really deserves to be trusted (especially since they hide their own secrets), but the dynamic that Diego is trying to set up seems very unfair for Alicia.
• Amateur Sleuth: What drives the resolve of many of the mysteries surrounding the Gran Hotel is that if it wasn't for Alicia or Julio, who aren't trained detectives or even part of the police force, many of the villains (especially Diego) would have "won" That is, considering that Ayala wouldn't have managed the whole cases on his own.
• Ambition Is Evil: The series clearly shows that whoever tries to climb the greasy pole of wealth and power, things aren't going to come their way at the end. Just ask that to some of the characters, such as Cristina, Pascual, Belén and Diego. They all end up dead.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Julio, when he is sure Diego is about to slaughter him.
• Antagonist in Mourning: Diego buries his own mother after she is murdered by the mysterious figure's intent on getting revenge against him. Just after a brief long-awaited reunion Diego had with her.
• Apron Matron: Ángela is seen and respected as a powerful (sometimes more as a mother than a chief) figure for the servants, since she has been working in the hotel for a long time.

• Arranged Marriage: It's Spain in the earlier 20th Century, and this was a normal thing that happened with wealthiest families, as exemplified with the Alarcón family, especially for the power and other benefits this method would bring to them. Alicia and Diego's marriage arrangement, however, was the result of a deal that Teresa had with him, after he helped her in the murder of her husband. And Diego was going for the power that the hotel symbolized... one of the reasons why Carlos Alarcón thought he wasn't good for his daughter.
• Asshole Victim: Don Carlos and Cristina turned out to be not the "angels" their own families thought they were. That doesn't mean that they deserved their fates, though.

• Baby-Doll Baby: Laura has a doll that she treats as a real baby.
• Babies Ever After: Julio and Alicia and also Laura and Javier in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
• Batman Gambit: Teresa uses Alfredo's pride to get him to do whatever she wants, especially when his family went broke.

• Bar Brawl: The nearby Cantaloa's tavern sets up a few of these as part of their nocturnal gambling games.

• Best Served Cold: It takes Jesús/Samuel twelve years to get revenge on Diego/Adrian, after the death of Marta Santos.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Just before Belén gets captured by Detective Ayala, when her plans were revealed as part of a set up that Andrés helped to plan with the detectives and Bazán, she decides to kill herself by throwing herself from a cliff.
• Big Damn Kiss: Julio and Alicia have several of these, usually complete with swelling orchestral music.
• Big Fancy House: The Gran Hotel is more of a house that serves as a hotel in all its means. The real location is actually a real life palace!
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Alarcón family, by a lot.
  • Don Carlos wasn't the loveable father and husband that Alicia thought he was. Don Carlos had an affair with Ángela, whom he had two offsprings: Ángel and Andrés. He also acknowledged Andrés as his son, while Ángel was "dead" to him. His marriage with Teresa wasn't the best, either... especially when he started poisoning her to have more control over the hotel.
  • Doña Teresa, the Evil Matriarch, worried more about her family's wealthy status as owner of the hotel. And after she murdered her husband, she didn't care to "sell" Alicia to Diego, who helped her in hiding the truth about his murder. She eventually resents her decisions after her whole family loses her trust.
  • Sofía's marriage problems with Alfredo over a Fake Pregnancy is only the tip of the iceberg. She killed two women — Alfredo covers her up for Cristina, but the last one was killed out of jealousy by her. She also gets into an affair with father Graú... which becomes the seal of a possible divorce with Alfredo.
  • Javier is the Black Sheep of the family, and as the middle son he resents a lot his parents' preferences over his sisters and Andrés, when he found out that his own father treated him more as a "Well Done, Son" Guy. He thinks of himself as The Casanova and he is practically useless for the society, unless he is set for an Arranged Marriage.
• Blackmail: All over the place if it concerns one of many secrets of the hotel and its owners.
• Blood from the Mouth: Beatriz. Later Julio after receiving some Worst Aid.
• Bookcase Passage: Instead of a bookcase, this happens in a closet that leads to a secret room that was originally Don Carlos' hidden study.
• Boom, Headshot!: A lot of the mooks and shady characters end up this way, even when fired upon by less-than-expert marksmen. Notable examples include Pascual and El Oso.

• The Butler Did It: And it all happens Beneath Suspicion. It ended up being the maître of the hotel. Twice. The Killer of the Gold Knife? It was Don Benjamín, the good old head waiter that worked in the hotel for more than two decades. The mysterious figure who kidnapped Alicia and was seeking revenge on Diego? Jesús (whose real name is Samuel Arriaga) who was "recently" transferred after Don Benjamín was found guilty of the former case..
• Calling the Old Man Out: Alicia has an amazing round of this with Teresa in S3.
• Captive Date: Diego lights some candles and brings dinner for Alicia on a tray under a pretty silver dome. It would be romantic if she wasn't locked up in an underground cave where no one can hear her screams.
• Carpet-Rolled Corpse: The "Diplomate Overdose" incident. Played for Laughs when the corpse in the carpet is lowered out of a window.
• The Casanova: Javier Alarcón is not afraid to show his "charms", even though they also tend to run against him, once knowledge of him spreads around Cantaloa.
• Catch Your Death of Cold: Juanito dies after he was exposed to a cold rainy day. This being the earlier 20th century, it's expected this would happen to many, due to the limited access to medical attention and medicine that couldn't have existed back in the day.
• Character Development:
  • Teresa, of all people. During the last season, she realizes the mistakes she has made with her family and the hotel's management, and eventually accepts that her daughter is in love with a low-class man.
  • Javier goes from a conceited brat to a Happily Married father of three children.
  • Alicia gets better at standing up for herself and eventually does what she wants rather than what she should have.
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: You wouldn't be expecting less of a murder and mystery drama series that takes place in earlier 1900s. There's too many deaths, some as results of murder, or some others as result from illnesses...
• Character Outlives Actor: Juan Luis Galiardo passes away before the arc of his character, Ernesto, closes up (Left Hanging loose ties of his possible romance with Ángela). Ernesto leaves the hotel, while leaving behind a letter explaining his motives, as he is seen riding off into the sunset.
• The Chessmaster:
  • The big one would be Teresa when she is moving her influence powers around... until certain someone ends up blocking up her way.
  • Diego thinks he is one, but he is eventually Hoist by His Own Petard as Jesús Cisneros a.k.a. Samuel Arriaga enters into scene when he starts threatening him.
• Christianity is Catholic: Roman Catholicism plays a key part in the plot, as it is the reason why Alicia can't just divorce Diego through legal means. She has to prove that he was using a false name to nullify their marriage.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Teresa. It's more easier to count how many times she did not backstab someone.
  • Belén seems to be incapable of not backstabbing everyone around her either.
• Clean, Pretty Childbirth:
  • Justified in Sofía's case, since she pulls it off for obvious reasons.
  • Averted by Belén because she didn't know that she was having twins at first and because the midwife left her to her own luck as soon as the first twin was born, since the second was received by Andrés.

• Consulting a Convicted Killer: Although Don Benjamín was a murderer, Alicia knew that he was devoted to his work as a maître, and that he worked very closely to her father, even before his sudden death. Since he was already arrested, she negotiated with him in a possible manner that she would keep supporting his family (without telling them that he was a convicted Serial Killer), and he hands over a very important clue related to Don Carlos' murder: the bottle of arsenic that was used to poison him.
• Contamination Situation: The cholera outbreak that suddenly starts threatening the lives of many of the servants and guests of the hotel, in late S3's episodes.

• Cool Old Lady:
  • Lady, who has been living in the hotel for many years and is a friend to the Alarcón family.
  • Ángela has been the hotel's head housekeeper for years, raised her child on her own, and eventually becomes the hotel's director.
• Cuckold:
  • Diego's evil side is explained by being this in both his marriages.
  • Alfredo when Sofía cheats with Father Grau.

• Daddy's Girl: Alicia loved her father very much (and she was his favorite child), that she couldn't believe all the secrets that he had been hiding up until his death. She eventually realized that he wasn't the great father-husband figure that she thought he was, but she was very determined to find the real reason he died.

• Dark Secret: The Gran Hotel keeps tons of secrets under its roof — People aren't who they are supposed to be. There's ambition and backstabbing in between. There also lies affairs and many murders.

• Delivery Guy: Andrés, after Belén has been left to die by the shifty midwife, not realizing it's twins.
• Destroy the Evidence: While Teresa is very good at this, she fails to get rid of Celia Velledur's wallet, since Alicia and Ángela find it in her room.

• Did Not Die That Way: One of the mysteries that gets set it's that Carlos Alarcón didn't die naturally as it was told to Alicia. He was actually poisoned as a murder attempt by her mother, Teresa.
• Dirty Cop: Bazán, who was actually acting under Belén's orders, to convict and execute Andrés for her "supposed" murder, just to get some part of the Alarcón's inheritance.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • Carlos Alarcón, Alicia's father, died some time before the series starts.
  • Andrés' father has been absent from his life ever since he was a child, until it is revealed that Carlos Alarcón was his biological father all along. In Season 2, Ángela's husband appears, but he does not reveal his identity to Andrés.
• Disposable Sex Worker: Jimena and the girl whose body is believed to be Belén's are both sex workers and their deaths fit this trope, with very little narrative focus on their deaths compared to other deaths.

• Distressed Damsel: Alicia frequently falls into this role, and even Maite is threatened by Diego and Bazán, and is held hostage by Ezekiel.
• Domestic Abuse:
  • Diego abuses Alicia, when she regrets his affection towards him because that's not what "love" is to her. It does end up badly a few times. And one time, Julio was so fed up (enough to kill him) because of what he did to her.
  • Carlos and Teresa's marriage was already on the rocks (him being in adultery relationships, and Teresa wanting more control of the hotel) when he started poisoning her.
• Drama Bomb: Every other episode where you are expecting good things are going to happen to everyone... except they don't. And there was an actual bomb, too.
• Duel to the Death: After Javier sleeps with two sisters resulting in one pushing the other out of a window and then killing herself, their father challenges him to one of these.

• Earn Your Happy Ending: At the end, almost everyone gets their happy ending — Arriaga gets his revenge, while Teresa recovers the ownership of the hotel. Alfredo and Sofía move to Santander and he becomes the city's mayor. The detectives are awarded for their successful investigation. Andrés and Maite get married, Javier and Laura save their marriage and have three children, and Julio and Alicia get married and have a kid.
• The Edwardian Era: Only more like Alfonsian, given that this is Spain rather than Great Britain. King Alfonso XIII even turns up as a guest of the hotel.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Diego and his mother, Sagrario, who he hasn't seen in more than a decade... and then she is murdered by a third party, Samuel Arriaga, just to make him suffer as part of his revenge.
• Evil Cripple: "How many one-armed men are trying to kill me?" Averted when Pablo/Juan turns out not to be evil.
• Fake Aristocrat: Julio pretends to be a guest named Señor Mollins.
• Fake Pregnancy: Sofía was infertile, but wanted to have children with Alfredo to somehow fix their almost broken marriage. And with guidance of her mother, she was going to have one, one way or another.
• Faking the Dead:
  • Cristina faked her death because she knew a secret that could effectively ruin the Alarcón family (or, at least, Teresa and her accomplice, Diego). But then she is killed... by Sofía, no less.
  • Belén does this in order to frame Andrés, to get him executed and steal his legitimate inheritance. However, Ayala fakes the execution and her plan is eventually unravelled.

• Finger in the Mail: Javier actually fakes a blackmail, when he borrows one of Garrido's fingers.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Julio, Alicia, Andrés, and Maite (though Alicia had already formed friendships with the latter two before things got messy.)

• Four-Temperament Ensemble
  • Sanguine: Andrés
  • Melancholic: Maite
  • Choleric: Julio
  • Phlegmatic: Alicia
• Frame-Up: There's too many! Alicia is framed for trying to kill Diego in the second-to-last episode, Sofía is framed for being the Gold Knife Killer, Julio is framed by his ex for killing a random woman, and Andrés is framed for the murder of Belén - by Belén!
• Give the Baby a Father: Andrés offers to marry Belén, because he is the biological father of Juanito, except he really is not the father. Coincidently, Juan (his "father") married Ángela for the exact same reason, since Andrés was the result of Ángela's affair with Don Carlos.
• Gorgeous Period Dress: Although dresses cover everything save for the hands and the head (as expected of deeply Catholic turn-of-the-century Spain), they are still quite gorgeous.
• Grande Dame: Lady is the classic cliché.
• Great Detective: Detective Ayala, and his former "superior", the Clueless Detective Hernando. Between him and the need for hard evidence, sadly, the pair sometimes gives the impression that the Police Are Useless when it comes to ferreting out the true villains.
• Guilt-Induced Nightmare: Sofía has guilt dreams of dripping blood following her second kill.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Alicia, who remains one of the few characters that stay true to her own original convictions and is not corrupted by ambition or power, as the rest of her family.

• Heroic BSoD: Julio gets one of these after Alicia is kidnapped.
  • and another one when Andrés is about to be executed.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Detective Ayala and Hernando, his assistant. Even though Hernando is implied to be married, he is almost never seen without Ayala.
  • Julio and Andrés, since Julio arrived at the hotel. They consider each other as their respective best friends.
  • Maite and Alicia. Maite has been friends with Alicia since they were younger, and she is also her confidant.
• Historical Domain Character: Harry Houdini, Agatha Christie and King Alfonso XIII all pass through the hotel at times.
• Hollywood Healing: A couple of times, characters receive injuries that, in normal circumstances, would leave them bedridden for weeks, but they recover miraculously and are up and walking soon after. In one case, Julio is well enough to have sex a mere day after being shot in the chest/shoulder.
• Hopeless Suitor: Maite loves Julio. Considering he and Alicia are the Official Couple there's no hope for it to go anywhere.
• Hot for Preacher: Sofía has an affair with a priest.
• Hospital Hottie: Laura, the pretty nurse Javier falls in love with.

• If I Can't Have You…: Diego threatens Alicia to kill her when he finds out that she is in love with someone else.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Alicia, right down to her 99% pure-white wardrobe. It never even seems to occur to her to be even a little bit malicious.
• Incurable Cough of Death: This is how cholera seems to manifest itself in Diego, although it isn't what ends up killing him.
• Interclass Romance: A classic example of this trope: Alicia is the upper-class daughter of the hotel owner and she's having a love affair with Julio, a poor waiter.
• Intoxication Ensues: The soup of the day is made of drugs that Javier was hiding in the kitchen. (It Makes Sense in Context). Eventually, he stops the cooks to serve it to the hotel's guests... but the waiters still eat it.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: This is how Diego keeps Alicia from leaving the hotel — threatening the maids and waiters she feel so much sympathy with.
  • Javier forces Julio to fight in the tavern by firing two random members of the staff and threatening to do the same to Andrés (although it's likely he was just bluffing).
• Karma Houdini: Sofía avoids the consequences of killing Cristina and Beatriz.
• Keeping Secrets Sucks: Especially when you're keeping them from a suspicious spouse or an innocent poor friend like Andrés.

• Kissing Under the Influence: Andrés kisses Maite while they are both quite drunk.
• Ladykiller in Love: Javier ends up like this a couple of times. Particularly in the last episodes, when he realizes he loves his wife, even if she is mentally ill.

• Last-Minute Hookup: Andrés and Maite.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Sofía wants children but becomes infertile. Belén gets pregnant accidentally.
• Let Off by the Detective: Ayala lets some things slide for the greater good...

• Local Hangout: If they're not at the hotel, they're probably at the tavern.
• Love at First Sight: Julio says he fell in love with Alicia upon seeing her on the train platform about 20 seconds into the first episode.

• Love Makes You Evil: Diego is already evil, but love certainly makes him obsessed.
• Luck-Based Search Technique: After trying and failing to locate it, Julio and Alicia discover the secret room by accident while making out in the closet of Room 28.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Don Carlos is Andrés's real and biological father, born from a secret love relationship he had with Ángela.
• Malicious Slander: Anytime Teresa holds up a copy of "La Vanguardia" and insists they've got it wrong.
• Manchurian Agent: Alicia is brainwashed by her captors in the earlier episodes of S3, to kill Diego. They program her to kill him at a certain time with a certain music, until Julio brings up to her senses.
• Marital Rape License: Unfortunately, this is 1905-1907 and it's a heavily conservative Spanish culture at the time.
• Marry for Love: Alicia tries this argument to put off marrying Diego, though it doesn't work.
• Masquerade Ball: The hotel hosts one in episode 3.01 "Baile de máscaras"
• The Meddling Kids Are Useless: Julio, Alicia, Maite, and Andrés never actually end up personally taking revenge or enacting justice, on anyone.
• Meaningful Name / Shout-Out: Alicia is a blonde, independent woman more interested in having a career and learning new things than in getting married and being a Proper Lady. Likely a reference to Alice from Alice in Wonderland .
  • Belén is the Spanish name for 'Bethlehem'.Guess whose pregnancy (and the resulting babies) will play a major role in the story?
• Middle Child Syndrome: Javier, resident Black Sheep, since he never felt as privileged as Sofía or Alicia.

• Mood-Swinger: Laura suffers from psychotic sprouts, which is one of the reasons she is an Old Maid.
• Mr. Fanservice: Julio Olmedo and his often-absent shirts.
• Murder the Hypotenuse
  • Beatriz is killed by Sofía after she threats her marriage with Alfredo.
  • Diego wouldn't think twice in killing that person who Alicia would be loving instead of him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Teresa gets a hefty dose of this in the third season when faced with the disintegration of her family.

• Nice Guy: Andrés
• Nice to the Waiter: Alicia is shown to be very nice to the hotel staff compared to the rest of her family.The fist thing she does after greeting her mother when she comes home in the first is going down to the kitchens to say hello, and she also mentions that she knows everyone who woks in Gran Hotel personally, except perhaps those who were hired recently. Diego later uses this against her by threatening to take it out on the staff if she tries to run away

• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • Andrés marrying Belén to save her and her child from disgrace and poverty. Belén only wanted to tie knots with him because that would make her filthy rich, since she knew that he was an Alarcón. She even tried to frame him up for her "death", after they knew it was "over" when Juanito died.
  • Alicia marrying Diego to uphold family honor, even though she loved Julio. And that didn't end up that well after a Trauma Conga Line that would have been deadly for her.
• No Name Given: Ayala's first name is listed as Horacio by various sources, but Hernando is only ever known as exactly that. Lady's real name is Ludivina, but she too lacks a surname.

• Oh, Crap!: Several, but most notably when Alicia finds out she was tricked to wait for Diego in the hidden room...

• Only a Flesh Wound: Get stabbed! Phew! It missed all the vital organs! Then, the wound gets infected and feverish enough that you spend one night really delirious and spewing out all sorts of plot tease secrets and even the doctor is like "YOUR LIFE IS IN GOD'S HANDS NOW" and then within 24 hours you're up and about, with a walking-stick just in case but you don't really need it.
• Open Heart Dentistry: Ayala has performed autopsies on corpses so that totally qualifies him to remove shrapnel from Julio's gut, right?

• Pair the Spares: Andrés kisses Maite while they are drunk, and they eventually get married.

• Posthumous Character: A few of these, notably Don Carlos and Diego's first wife, Marta Santos.
• Pregnancy Faint: Happens to Alicia in the final episode.
• Proper Lady: Alicia. She was more spirited in the first series, then less so as time goes on. Diego beats the spirit out of her.
• Rape Discretion Shot: They cut to the closed door of one of the hotel's rooms, and a maid passes by, hears what's going on, and quickly leaves.

• Reasonable Authority Figure: Detective Ayala, even though he is a bit of a By-the-Book Cop, he is perfectly willing to ignore certain things in the interest of upholding justice.
• Revenge: One of the many plots that drive the series. Particularly Arriaga's revenge against Diego because he killed Marta Santos, Diego's first wife and Arriaga's lover.

• Revenge Before Reason: Samuel Arriaga prefers to sacrifice the life of many (especially Julio or Alicia) who didn't do anything to him, just to perform his vendetta on Diego. Teresa and Clara (Samuel's sister) think that he is going too far when Diego was already captured.

• Runaway Fiancé: Averted when Alicia decides to go through with the wedding and stays married for over a year.
• Running Gag:
  • Julio encountering Lady and trying to either avoid her or make excuses about what he is doing (a result of him meeting her first while trying to pass himself off as a hotel guest, and not wanting to reveal he is a servant).It becomes even funnier when it turns out she knew it all along but let it slide because he was handsome and Alicia's friend.He couldn't fool young Agatha Christie either.
  • Guys getting slapped by their mothers.
• Say My Name:
  • "ALICIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" In slow motion, no less.
  • Alicia screams Julio's name a total of nineteen times in the scene where he gets shot by Diego.

• See You in Hell: Jesus & Diego are weirdly bound together by the depth of antagonism between them in their twelve-year tango of death. This is quoted exactly in the beach scene when Jesús shoots Diego.

• Sexy Priest: Padre Graú, the priest who Sofía sleeps with, happens to be a casanova who has tricked other ladies under his charm.
• Shipper on Deck: There's a few people who want to see Julio and Alicia together, other than Andrés (who is more than glad with the idea of them being happy) — just ask detective Ayala, or even Agatha Christie.
• Shirtless Scene: Julio frequently gets his shirt off.
• Shout-Out: In one episode, the daughter of Lady's English friends comes to the hotel, and helps the policemen to investigate a robbery. In the end, she reveals that she is planning to write novels about a clever detective and his hapless assistant. It turns out the young woman is Agatha Christie, and Ayala and Hernando are the inspiration for Poirot and Hastings. It also implies that Lady is the model for Miss Marple.
• Sickbed Slaying: Averted, but barely. And it drives Andrés deep into paranoia for the rest of the series.

• Spurned into Suicide: Javier's fiancee Eugenia, in the first season, after she finds out he slept with his sister.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Julio and Alicia suffer a lot through the whole drama just because they want to be together. It's a rocky road until they earn their happy ending.
• Talking in Your Sleep: Diego's feverish hallucinations of Don Carlos.
• The Alcoholic: Javier goes through some spells of this when he is depressed and when he isn't. Alfredo and Diego also have their incidents.
• These Hands Have Killed: Moments after Sofía stabbed Beatriz out of jealousy, she suffers a fatal realization.
• Three-Month-Old Newborn: Belen's sons are this, clearly older than any newborn.
• Trauma Conga Line: Alicia gets raped, survives an explosion, and is subsequently kidnapped, all in a single evening.
• Virgin in a White Dress: You rarely see Alicia wearing anything non-white after she marries Diego. She had a few (though not many) colorful daytime outfits in the first series, which all but disappear, aside from mourning suits and ball gowns, in the following episodes. The more her life comes off the rails, the more she seems to commit to wearing little other than white, to the extent that Samuel is able to frame her for attempted murder by simply putting his also-blonde (and otherwise not much of a lookalike) sister in one of Alicia's white dresses.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Andrés is by far the only best friend Julio had in his entire life, and so is Julio to Andrés. That much, that they both treat and also fight each other as if they were brothers.
• Waking Up at the Morgue: Understandably, Sofía is freaked out when she wakes up in a room full of dead bodies after the explosion at the Gran Hotel.
• We Have to Get the Bullet Out!: After Julio is shot the doctor insists on taking the bullet out despite it being near a major artery. As a consequence, he bleeds into his lungs..
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Arriaga blows up the hotel as a mere opening act, causing several bystanders to be killed or horribly injured, and considers Alicia only as a means to bring pain to Diego, without caring what would happen to her.

• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The ending scene is a silent movie style look at a future where Julio and Alicia have a son, Maite and Andrés have got married, and Teresa has regained control of the hotel.

• Woman Scorned: Eugenia. A Clingy Jealous Girl who murders people!

• Yandere: Eugenia. After she catches Javier sleeping with her sister, Eugenia throws her out a window and later threatens Javier, saying that she'll tell the police (and her father) that he did it unless he agrees to marry her, a literal example of If I Can't Have You…. She is eventually Spurned into Suicide after her threat falls apart.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Are things going well for the good characters? Enjoy it. It's not going to last.
• You're Not My Father: Alicia disowns her more murderous family members with ease and regularity.

• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Yes. Yes they would. Except in don Jesus' case—he'll just knock you out instead.