The Royal Palace of La Magdalena is a building located on the Magdalena peninsula, opposite the island of Mouro, in the city of Santander, and was built between 1909 and 1911, by popular subscription, to house the Spanish royal family.

The work of the architects Javier González Riancho and Gonzalo Bringas Vega, it stands on the site of the old fort of San Salvador de Hano, which protected the entrance to the bay.

It cost 700,000 pesetas in 1912 and was paid for by the town council and a large number of local families who made a laborious micro-patronage effort, such as the 100,000 pesetas from the El Sardinero Society or the 1,000 pesetas from the Botín family.

The financial problems to pay for the work meant that the Executive Committee even went so far as to buy Christmas lottery tickets to try their luck, without success.

It was furnished in 1913 and immediately became the summer residence of King Alfonso XIII and his family, who occupied it regularly until the proclamation of the Second Republic.

In 1914 the stables were designed by González Riancho, which emulate a medieval English village with pointed roofs with steep slopes, exposed timber framing, etc.

In 1977 Juan de Borbón sold the building to the city for 150 million pesetas.

It is a work of eclectic style, combining English influences, evident in the arrangement of the exterior masses, the abundance of chimneys, the shape of the windows, etc., with French style contributions, such as the double flight staircase of the main staircase, the asymmetry of the building's bodies, etc., as well as traces taken from the Baroque architecture of the mountains.

Its construction popularised an eclectic-regionalist sub-style in Cantabria, whose greatest exponent is the palace itself, and which comes from the English picturesque palace of the Hornillos.