Gala

Este hostal es idóneo para estar en el meollo más absoluto de Madrid sin estar agobiado por el mismo! Está ubicado en un edificio antiguo, digno de admirar, porque conserva la escalera de madera y los portones antiguos.
El hostal está en una de las plantas del edificio y es muy cuco. Moderno, coqueto y con ducha hidromasaje incluida. Las habitaciones están bien acondicionadas, y aunque pequeñitas, son muy cucas.
Los chicos que lo llevan son muy majos, amables y serviciales, te ayudan en lo que sea. No Disponen de bar o cafetería, pero por las mañanas ponen palmeritas, sobaos y magdalenas a disposición, gratis. Disponen de vending y máquina de café.
Positivo: el local y el edificio tiene mucho encanto. El personal es amabilísimo.
A mejorar: la sonoridad de las habitaciones. Aunque se respeta bastante las horas de dormir. Una cafetería no estaría mal, aunque en realidad, bajando a la calle tienes lo que desees.

Es un hotal que se encuentra en la Plaza Santo Domingo a escasos metros de Plaza Callao y calle Preciados. Muy muy céntrico. El hostal se encuentra en la segunda planta del edificio. Cuesta un poco ver ya que fuera del edificio no encontraremos ningún letrero grande indicando que está Hostal allí.
El hostal está muy muy bien. De este tipo han proliferado muchísimos en Madrid y es fantástico porque puedes disponer de un alojamiento más que correcto, céntrico y con un precio mucho más asequible que los de los hoteles.
El personal del hotel es muy simpático y agradable, las instalaciones limpias y muy modernas así como las habitaciones también. Disponen de colchón «visco-​elástico», ducha hidromasaje, calefacción, aire acondicionado, televisor, internet wifi gratuito… todas las comodidades necesarias.
Es la primera vez que nos alojamos en este hostal y seguramente no será la última.

My husband and I stayed at Hostal Gala for our 5^th anniversary trip to Spain this July and loved it. The staff was incredibly friendly and helpful to us. We asked them so many questions and really talked their ears off and they never seemed impatient or hesitated to help. The bilingual staff would quickly switch between Spanish and English to accommodate both my husband (who speaks fluent Spanish) and me (who speaks about 20 words of Spanish). They gave us restaurant recommendations and were extremely dedicated to fixing the TV in our room when we mentioned it was having problems, eventually moving us to a larger room when the technician was unable to fix it right away. They brought us a bottle of cava on our first night there, which was a nice touch. I was told that they could wash laundry for us and they also allowed us to put a few things in the fridge they have in the back. Everything was clean, although extremely small according to our American standards, but we didn’t mind. We got a great rate and the location was convenient for exploring the city. It was incredibly noisy at night because of its location, but if that’s a problem for you, you probably just should not go to Madrid. During the day there was construction nearby. I brought earplugs and I was fine. We were quite pleased that there was an elevator in the building for those days when we had spent far too many hours wandering the Prado. We wished they had stronger air conditioning, but hey, it’s Spain. Usually we opened up the windows in the evening and let the breeze cool the room. We felt like they made our stay special and will return next time we’re in the country.

So in Spain, ‘hostal’ does not actually mean what ‘hostel’ means in the rest of the world.
Instead, think of a ‘hostal’ as a small, independently-​owned and usually affordable hotel. (Wikipedia explains further —
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Conveniently located near to a couple of Metro stations (we arrived via the Santa Domingo stop, but I think Callao is much easier if you have suitcases since there are elevators at that station), Hostal Gala had some of the friendliest employees of any place we stayed in Europe.
(Of course, I don’t the employees were actually Spanish. The first one was definitely Bulgarian, which continued a theme on this past trip of running into friendly Bulgarians. I have nothing but good impressions of Bulgarians now!)
We were very kindly upgraded from a standard hostal room into one of the larger apartment-​size rooms that Hostal Gala offers. Fantastic!
It was wonderful to have some space, a large table for eating/​writing, and even a refrigerator and other kitchen appliances.
Even though we looked over a busy plaza, the noise level really was not bad.
We did have trouble figuring out how to use the window shutters. In fact, we didn’t even realize there *were* window shutters until our last night there. I just thought that Spaniards were heavy sleepers who didn’t mind only having gauzy curtains to (slightly) darken the room. Well, I guess this would be basic information for most Europeans, but perhaps Gala could explain shutter operation to clueless Americans.
I appreciated the free wi-​fi.
Other issues? The shower drained poorly and the bathroom itself was tiny. But those are manageable problems when you are only paying 70 Euro a night for an apartment-​size room.
So overall, I’d have to recommend Gala. We only stayed two nights, then visited Toledo and changed to a different hotel when we came back to Madrid, but I wish we had stayed at Gala the entire time.