Club class
Mark Palmer
Sometime in the early 1990s — while employed by the Sunday Telegraph — I was sent to report on how Marbella’s fortunes were being rebuilt by a medallionman once jailed for his part in the construction of a building which collapsed killing 86 people.
Señor Jesus Gil y Gil had been mayor of Marbella for less than a year but was busy resurfacing roads, chasing away drug-dealers and handbag-snatchers, planting palm trees and geraniums on the seafront and in the central reservation of the town’s stretch of the infamous Highway of Death, and positioning armed policemen on every other street corner. Gil, who was also chairman of Atletico Madrid football club, didn’t belong to any particular party. Like a sheriff in the Wild West, he just believed in doing what you have to do although where the money was coming from for his clean-up was unclear. At one point, his plans included launching a direct train service from Malaga airport to Marbella and creating a white marble promenade linking Marbella to the tax-deductible excesses of Puerto Banus.
Sadly, when I arrived in town, Gil was poorly. His office said he was suffering from ‘high cholesterol’ and despite my pleading it was thought that talking to a British newspaper was not going to speed his recovery. Even so — and after consulting the then-Queen Mother of Marbella, Lady Abercrombie (the third wife of Sir Ian Abercrombie), who always used to decamp to Marbella once the partridge shooting season was over — I wrote that Señor Gil had done more to put the Costa del Sol resort on the itinerary of a certain kind of traveller than anyone since Prince Alfonso zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who founded the Marbella Club in 1955.
Today both Gil and Prince Alfonso are dead, but Marbella in general and the Marbella Club in particular appear to be thriving. It’s business as usual on both fronts. Which is to say that the present mayor, Marisol Yague, has been arrested on assorted charges of fraud, bribery and embezzlement while the Marbella Club has had several hundreds of thousands of pounds lavished upon it and is doing brilliantly, attracting both new money and aging British aristos with stories to tell about the days when the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Princess Grace, Richard Burton, Brigitte Bardot, Roger Moore and Bruce Forsyth were all regulars.
Everyone should stay at the Marbella Club at least once in their lives. It’s not cheap, but it is perhaps the finest example of a hotel that manages to be all things to all people, quietly going about radical reform and expanding on several fronts without anyone really noticing. It now occupies more than 500 acres of prime real estate about a mile outside Marbella and comprises dozens of low-lying buildings hidden among mature palm trees, exotic shrubs and an abundance of tumbling bougainvillaea.
Getting there is a doddle. Flying to Malaga from anywhere in the UK could hardly be easier. Then it’s a mere 40-minute drive on the motorway, from where you get a good view of the Costa del Sol’s high-rise horrors, Torremolinos and Fuengirola, before dropping down into Marbella. Head east on the busy dual-carriageway towards Puerto Banus and after only a mile you will see a grand white entrance on your left with more than a bit of bling about it. You might be tempted to keep driving, but don’t.
Stay in one of the villas if you can afford it. They come with their own pools, and you never need see another soul. But that would be such a pity because popping down to the Beach Club from time to time (the buffet lunch is a spectacle in itself) to see who’s there is one of the attractions. It’s also a big mistake to miss out on breakfast on the terrace of the main restaurant, where you really get to see who’s who without the interference of sun cream and straw hats.
A friend, who knows the Marbella Club better than most people, advised me that British guests tend to make their camp around the swimming pool in the garden while continental Europeans occupy the sunbeds by the beach. The roll-call recently has included Messrs Zidane and Beckham and their wives, members of the Spanish royal family, Russians (Roman Abramovich has just bought a £20.4 million pad on Marbella’s Golden Mile), Julio Iglesias and the Aga Khan. In other words, a mixed bag.
They follow in the gilded footsteps of Audrey Hepburn, Tony Curtis, Prince Rainier, Bob Hope, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, Gunther Sachs, Adnan Khashoggi, Lord Harewood and Lord and Lady Monckton.
Prince Alfonso, who was married three times (his last wife was English), was a godson of the Spanish monarch Alfonso XIII. I met him on that assignment for the Sunday Telegraph. In fact, he asked me to come along to his 67th birthday party which was held at his spectacular farm and vineyard just outside Ronda. It included the bizarre spectacle of the Prince and his chum, Gunter Sachs, standing in the middle of a bullring waving a red flag at an angry cow. ‘You can never test a bull before a fight, so we test the bravery of their mothers,’ he explained later. ‘Don’t worry about the pricks we give them in the back. It’s just like if you cut yourself shaving.’ The Prince was joined at the Marbella Club in 1956 by his cousin, Count Rudi von Schonburg, who ushered in a professionalism that still persists. Count Rudi, still sprightly, still good-looking, is to be found at the club most days and is never happier than when talking to guests about the golden days. We had lunch in the new MC Café, during which he kept our table amused for an hour and a half barely pausing to draw breath. Get him to tell his jolly story about the Duke of Windsor and his Hawaii shirt.
One of Count Rudi’s innovations in the 1960s was to open The Grill, where at night you sit under a canopy of pine trees and are surrounded by huge candles dripping wax on to the stone floor. The food is sensational. We ate warm duck liver, sautéed king prawns and noisette of veal and still had room for crumble with hot pineapple and ice cream.
Prince Alfonso lived just long enough to see the club’s Thalasso Spa in action. I like to think that, like me, he maintained a healthy scepticism about people who worship ‘treatments’, particularly when they are cosseted in such a lush, natural environment. Having said that, I had a terrific time in the indoor sea pool, where the water is heated to body temperature. Jets of water pummel your body, which apparently energises and fortifies the immune system. More to the point, according to the spa’s à la carte menu, ‘skin becomes softer and suppler; the revitalisation of algae attacks fat cells and the figure becomes toned and firmer’. Nonsense, of course, but I rather enjoyed swimming against a current in such a way that I was doing breast stroke as fast as possible — while going backwards.
Then it was on to Carlos, an Argentine who has worked at the Marbella Club for 24 years. He knew Prince Alfonso well and by the time he had finished rubbing oil into my overweight, unsupple body I felt I knew the club like the back of my hand. Meanwhile, my companion reported that her 80-minute ‘sea creation facial treatment’ was superb.
And there’s something else you should know about the Marbella Club. Its present owner, who has invested vast sums into the place, happens to be an Iraqi.
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