What remains of Marbella and its mythical 'jet set' parties

At the foot of the La Concha mountain, Marbella has a unique microclimate that softens the summers and warms the winters. A century ago it was a garden next to the Mediterranean worthy of kings. The aristocrat Ricardo Soriano understood this. He bought 220,000 square meters and built the first hotel complex in the city. It was in 1945. A decade later, his nephew Alfonso de Hohenlohe, godson of Alfonso XIII, opened the Marbella Club with the help of his cousin Rudolf Graf von Schönburg, known as Count Rudi and married to Maria Luisa of Prussia.

They put the seed. And the surnames of nobility and royal houses watered them along with Hollywood stars, Arab sheikhs and billionaires from all over the world. They enjoyed the golden age of Marbella, letting themselves be seen and without fear of the paparazzi. A time that has a clear turning point: the emergence of Jesús Gil in the 90s. Now, the new Marbella prefers the music of the DJs, the anonymity of private parties and the glamor of the main gala of the Starlite Festival that tries to recover for the city the splendor of the summers of yesteryear.

The Marbella Club marks the pre Gil era. Brigitte Bardot, Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn, Kim Novak, Liza Minelli and Elizabeth Tylor passed through its luxurious facilities. Also Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier. Sean Connery went one step further in the late 1960s: he acquired the Malibu mansion in a pristine setting that he enjoyed with his wife, Micheline Roquebrune. The inauguration of Puerto Banús in 1971 was the final accolade for a tourist model far removed from Torremolinos and Benidorm. They wanted low altitude, green areas, beaches away from the brick. They didn't want new roads or a train to bring the masses there.

The list of those who savored that era is written in gold ink. But there are names that are already synonymous with Marbella. It happens with those of Gunilla von Bismarck and her ex-husband, Luis Ortiz, souls of every party or that of Jaime de Mora y Aragón, brother of Queen Fabiola of Belgium, who convinced the Arab sheikhs to spend their long breaks on this coast . Even that of Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi billionaire —and arms dealer— who arrived in this corner of the Costa del Sol in the late seventies, practically at the same time as King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. "That was a real jet set," recalls the journalist Juan de Dios Mellado, now retired from the press. "They had class," he stresses.

In the 80s, glamor completely flooded a Marbella that already exceeded 100,000 inhabitants, only 20 percent born there. In 1985, Olivia Valère, queen of the night, opened her first nightclub in Puerto Banús. That year, Khashoggi gave a birthday party that is still remembered. The photo of his wife Lamia accompanied by Brooke Shields illustrated the cover of the magazine Hello! of August 10. Marbella was a gold mine. “Those famous people were accessible. And so many came that they gave a special glow to the city”, says Andrés Lanza, who has photographed Marbella's social life from the seventies until last May, when he retired.

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“Marbella was never the fishing village that was mythologized. But it is an attractive and pleasant city, ”says José Luis Rodríguez, mayor between 1983 and 1987. During his term, he fined Gil 81 million pesetas for illegal construction. Without meaning to or knowing it, he encouraged the builder to enter politics. Gil understood that raising floors was easier (and the business, bigger) if he became mayor. As the HBO series The Pioneer reflects, he did it in 1991. Everything changed. The jet set began to leave. "They didn't like that character," emphasizes András Lanza. Even so, the inertia of the myth continued for a few years: Cynthia Lennon acquired a house, Prince another and Khashoggi continued to appear in the photos, now with Gil.

One of the symptoms of the fall of old Marbella was the departure of Sean Connery and his wife, fed up with the omnipresent urbanism. His house was demolished and converted into apartments in an operation that almost landed the actor in court in the Goldfinger case. King Fahd's stays in the Mar Mar palace were distanced in time and, without him, goodbye to the manna of petrodollars. El Martinete —by Antonio el Bailarín—, Villa Sagitario —by Gunilla von Bismarck— and Los Gitanillos —by Lola Flores— have been sold or put up for auction in recent years. The traces of an unrepeatable stage were erased by the mud of scandals. Gil went to prison three times. Then Julián Muñoz, Isabel Pantoja and Juan Antonio Roca arrived. The Malaya case was the final blow.

The trail of the jet set was lost during the gilismo and his descendants took a new course. Only Count Rudi, Gunilla and Luis Ortiz are still fighting today. “The new Marbella belongs to the DJs”, announced Olivia Valère four summers ago when celebrating the 30th anniversary of her first venue. Now familiar faces hide out at private parties and upload their own photos to Instagram. American tourism has returned, as well as Swedes and Swiss linked to banking or technology, but they are not to be seen. Even Russian oligarchs generally prefer privacy. Some go to Dani García's restaurant. Others, to the Starlite festival, whose charity dinner is always packed. Antonio Banderas and Eva Longoria are fixed there, who this week arrived in the city with her baby.

Maluma, Sting, Bertín Osborne and Taburete fit into the musical programming of the 2019 Starlite. A mirage of that Marbella. It still has the most luxurious port in Europe and the Marbella Club has eight themed parties ahead in El Patio, a space designed by Hubertus de Hohenlohe, Alfonso's son. Thousands of tourists also continue betting on the city for their summers. But the stars can only be seen in the photos that traditional restaurants hang on their walls. Testimonies of a time that is gone never to return.